Letters to the Editor
Wrong Spot for EMS Station

To the Editor:

Late last month, the Bloomberg administration has announced plans to assign Riverdale's ambulances to an Emergency Medical Service Station the administration proposes to build on the site of an abandoned firehouse on East 233rd Street in the Wakefield section of The Bronx. Unfortunately, this proposed Wakefield EMS station is an unacceptable location from which to cover the Riverdale and Kingsbridge areas of The Bronx because of extended ambulance travel times around Van Cortlandt Park.

Mapquest indicates that an ambulance response from 243 East 233rd St. to West 225th St. and Broadway in Kingsbridge would cover just over three miles. The same 233rd St. ambulance response to West 259th St. and Riverdale Ave. in Riverdale would cover over four miles. Given the fact that an ambulance responding from its Wakefield garage would often have to fight traffic on Gun Hill Road or on the Major Deegan Expressway, these ambulance response times could easily exceed 15 minutes to either of the above locations. A 15-minute Paramedic response time is double the national standard for urban Paramedic crews to begin administering Advance Life Support procedures for patients in cardiac arrest in order to maximize the patient's chances of a successful resuscitation.

The proposed misplacement of the Kingsbridge and Riverdale EMS ambulance units demonstrates the lack of true commitment on the part of Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta to responsible affirmative action to improve ambulance response times in Riverdale and other parts of the city. Instead of placing our EMS units in the wrong section of The Bronx, the FDNY should immediately condemn the vacant gas station portion of the proposed Manhattan College parking garage and build the needed state-of-the-art EMS Station there. This 242nd St. and Broadway EMS garage location would cut the travel distance to West 259th St. and Riverdale Ave. down to approximately two miles, and would cut by half the ambulance response times to all areas of Kingsbridge and Riverdale.

When the Fire Department petitioned the City Council in 1995 to take over EMS, FDNY correctly criticized the fact that EMS/HHC did not have community-based ambulance stations that would allow the EMS ambulance crews to remain in their communities to restock and change tours. As part of its merger plan to improve EMS response times, FDNY proposed building nine additional ambulance stations in The Bronx. Like so many broken promises in this ill-fated merger, FDNY has only added three EMS station in The Bronx in the 10-plus years since the merger.

FDNY has proposed building approximately 40 additional community-based EMS stations citywide to supplement the existing 17 EMS/HHC facilities. Sadly, FDNY has added just 12 new EMS stations citywide so far. At this snail's pace of construction, it would take three more decades for the city and FDNY to honor that 1995 commitment. Thus, because of FDNY's failure to construct these ready-line EMS stations, there is no realistic hope to reduce EMS response times further while simultaneously improving critical patient outcomes on a citywide basis.

The EMS garage situation in Manhattan is even more dismal. After Mayor Bloomberg recently tore down the newly constructed ready-line EMS Garage at Harlem Hospital, you can draw a line from the Battery up Fifth Ave. to Washington Heights and not find a single EMS ready-line garage. Instead, our supposedly "green" Mayor apparently thinks that it's okay for these Paramedic and EMT crews to sit for hours in cramped ambulance compartments wearing turnout gear while their ambulances are forced to idle on street corners. The millions of people living in Manhattan need ready-line EMS garages every 20 blocks if there are ever going to be good EMS response times in the borough. Given the rapid pace of construction in Manhattan, the city needs to identify these EMS facility sites now and, if necessary condemn these proposed EMS facility properties at once in order to ensure the public's medical safety in the future.

The emergency medical patient-care interests of the public are not served by the politicians and the EMS unions capitulating to the Mayor's desire to provide second-rate NYC EMS services on the cheap. The future of responsible NYC EMS services is in Mayor Bloomberg's hands - our EMS ambulances should not be idling out in the cold for the next 30 years' time as our neighborhood residents continue to suffer from poor EMS response times and even poorer patient outcomes.

RICHARD J. McALLAN, Senior NYC EMS Paramedic (Ret.)

Editor's note: Mr. McAllan, a former president of EMS Local 2507 of District Council 37, has lived in the Marble Hill/Kingsbridge area of The Bronx for thirty years.