Why did it take three hours for an ambulance to respond to a crash?

DELTA (NEWS 1130) – Maybe you were one of the thousands of drivers late for work last Wednesday morning because you were stuck in traffic caused by an accident on the Alex Fraser Bridge.

It took about three hours to clear the crash, and that’s how long it took an ambulance to get to the scene.

The accident was called in just before 6:00 a.m. and the ambulance arrived at about 8:45 a.m.

The ambulance wasn’t dispatched for 40 minutes after the call according to Emergency Health Services, delayed by the now-familiar high-volume of high-priority calls.

Paramedics were coming from North Delta. EHS says they’ve been dealing with a combination of factors which include an increase in calls linked to the large number of overdoses happening around the region.

Fire crews reached the scene first according to Senior Provincial Executive Director for Patient Care Paul Vallely. He says dispatch was in contact with fire, which advised the patient needing to go to hospital was in stable condition.

The call was deemed lower priority for that reason.

Vallely says the ambulance then became stuck in traffic caused by the accident.

“We need to respond to the sicker patients first and in that sense, it’s a lower priority compared to those calls and the first available ambulance that was available was dispatched on the call, but unfortunately from what I understand, the ambulance was caught up in the traffic as well and wasn’t able to get through the traffic to get to the accident sooner.”

Paramedics did not use lights and sirens to get the traffic ahead to clear. Vallely says it was discussed by paramedics on the call and dispatch.

“The decision in this instance was decided to not use lights and sirens because of the heavy traffic congestion. The little bit of room that was even available to try and move vehicles aside deemed basically a riskier proposition than travelling without lights and sirens to get to the accident scene.”

Non-serious injury car crashes are not considered Code 3, requiring lights and sirens. The ambulance service downgraded several types of calls, including falls and miscarriage, to Code 2 in 2014. Critics say that has increased wait times.

EHS is reviewing this call.

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