PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Tyler Weaver, Member of the Public, on Ambulance Response Times
2:43:34
·
6 min
Tyler Weaver, a former EMT, shared a personal tragedy involving his son's death due to long ambulance response times in the Bronx. He highlighted systemic issues in EMS resource allocation and response times, particularly in the Bronx, and called for improvements to address health equity concerns.
- Weaver's son waited 20 minutes for an ALS unit and 24 minutes for a BLS unit during a cardiac arrest, resulting in fatal brain damage.
- He identified disparities in ALS response times between boroughs, with the Bronx having significantly longer wait times compared to Manhattan and Brooklyn.
- Weaver also described frustrations with the FDNY complaint process, citing long delays and lack of communication in addressing his concerns about his son's case.
Tyler Weaver
2:43:34
Okay.
2:43:35
Alright.
2:43:35
Thank you.
2:43:35
I'll get started.
2:43:37
Hi.
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My name is Tyler Weaver.
2:43:39
Ambulance response times are at record highs.
2:43:43
These long ambulance response times tragically impacted my family in December.
2:43:49
When our adults on Nicholas Castello suffered a cardiac arrest at 5 AM in the Bronx.
2:43:54
That's, again, that's a time when there's not a lot of traffic.
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And he waited 20 minutes for an advanced life support paramedic unit.
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The backup basic life support unit took 24 minutes.
2:44:06
He was taken to the ER, but he had already suffered major brain injury because his heart had been stopped for so long.
2:44:13
Due to this extensive brain damage, our son was taken off life support pronounced dead the following day.
2:44:19
After my son died, I was so appalled, especially because I used to be an empty, at the long response time to his cardiac arrest that I investigated further and discovered a couple of things.
2:44:31
Number 1, the ALS unit for my son came from 24 blocks away.
2:44:36
The backup ALS unit was stationed 66 blocks away and had to travel through 3 different police precincts to get to my son.
2:44:45
Why were there no ambulances available locally in this area?
2:44:48
Well, the answer is hour a half earlier at 3:30, all the local ambulances were apparently sent to standby at a multilarm fire burning a row of unoccupied stores.
2:45:00
This movement at the Bronx communities of Riverdale, Kingsbridge, Pike And Dival And Fieldstin, which is about 65,000 residents, appear to have been left without quick access to ambulance services for several hours.
2:45:12
And unfortunately, my son needed a rapid ambulance response during that time window, TikTok moment, as counterpart in Narciso mentioned.
2:45:23
FDNY should take measures to reserve a local ALS ambulance be available to handle life threatening calls whenever there is also a major fire going on elsewhere in the same area.
2:45:35
The inability to properly resource both EMS incidents at the same time that night is alarming.
2:45:41
And demonstrates a serious lack of Bronx ambulance resources.
2:45:47
2nd thing, Bronx ALS response times are much worse than the other boroughs such as Manhattan, according to official city data only 22% of Bronx ALS responses since September arrived in less than 10 minutes.
2:46:00
This meant 2600 Bronx patients waited more than 10 minutes for an ALS ambulance in September.
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In contrast, the same Manhattan data was much better at 42, and Brooklyn was 48.
2:46:14
This disparity has been going on for many years and is only getting worse.
2:46:18
And I believe this is a EMS health equity issue.
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In closing, I call on the city council to eliminate this EMS health equity issue and that they mandate a certain amount of FDNY's $2,600,000,000 budget be used for properly.
2:46:35
Meeting the ALS ambulance needs of the Bronx so that other families won't have to suffer what mine did.
2:46:44
If I may, I also want to just touch on if I'm allowed to the grievance process I opened a complaint with the FDNY in June, complaining about the 20 minute response time and why none of the ambulances that were at the fire, which was 300 feet away from where my son was having CPR done on him.
2:47:07
Why none of those ambulances could have been sent to help them?
2:47:10
They were only 3 minutes away by foot, but they sent the different ambulance from 20 minutes away.
2:47:17
I opened the complaint with the FDNY, They told me someone would call me to get additional information.
2:47:25
That never happened.
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Whenever I contacted the civilian complaint unit at the NY EMS to inquire about how my case was proceeding.
2:47:38
They couldn't tell me anything else besides, oh, it's been escalated to a different team.
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And they refused to give me any information of how to contact that other team.
2:47:49
So I went through that for 2 months.
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I eventually called them at the end of that 2 month period and inquired, you know, what's going on?
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My complaint.
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And they said, don't worry.
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As soon as the complaint is closed, we will let you know.
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And I raised my hand.
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I'm like, so they're gonna close it without talking to me.
2:48:12
And they're like, look, we we empathize with your point of view, but that's how the system works.
2:48:17
So I I ended up contacting the office of the inspector general Department of Investigation in New York City and and spoke to a helpful woman there who then placed her own call over to the civilian complaint unit.
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Now remember, this is months in.
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And she got back to me.
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She says, oh, your your investigation is completed.
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You should be getting a letter in the next few days.
2:48:42
So I'm like, okay.
2:48:42
Thank you so much for your help because, obviously, I wasn't able to prompt a quick response to my complaint.
2:48:52
It's is now November.
2:48:56
I was told in the letter that they sent about my complaint, which was a form letter saying they had filed their internal procedures to the letter as far as complaint investigation goes.
2:49:08
And the letter said, if I want the results of the investigation, I have to file of Freedom of Information Act request, which I did immediately.
2:49:18
And I've been waiting about 4 months now for that Freedom of Information Act request to go through.
2:49:25
So, you know, end to end many, many months This that the grievance process is not friendly to grieving families, and I just wanted to add that.
2:49:36
It's it's kinda like rub salt in the wound.
2:49:39
And, yeah, I know it's a little off the topic of what this meeting's about, but Last thing I mentioned is that my written testimony, which I submitted, does have a little bit more data on the disparity between the different boroughs as far as ALS response time goes.
2:49:57
And if you're able to review that written testimony, there's this more useful information in there.
2:50:03
And I just wanna thank you for the opportunity to to talk to you today.
