NYC first-responders are taking longer to get to emergency situations around the City. According to City Hall’s preliminary management report, during the first four months of fiscal year 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, the average response time for “life-threatening medical emergencies”–adding ambulance actions to fire company promptitude–surged by 9 seconds, or 1.5%, rising from 9 minutes and 43 seconds to 9 minutes and 52 seconds. This is mainly due mainly to the traffic that paralyzes the city from Uptown to Downtown, from East to West, and not only during rush hours.
“Increased response times may be attributed to higher levels of traffic, an increase in the overall incidence of life-threatening medical emergencies, a decrease in the number of ambulances in service per day, and an increase in ambulance emergency room turnover time,” the New York Fire Department said, as quoted by the New York Post.
Although the FDNY extended the lease to the additional ambulances arranged during the COVID-29 pandemic, some of them were decommissioned starting fiscal year 2023 because they were too old.
However, fire companies are doing even worse than ambulances. Analyzing data from July to October 2023 and comparing it to the same period of the year before, the latter’s response times improved by 3 seconds–going from 10 minutes and 40 seconds to 10 minutes and 37 seconds. Instead, fire companies faced a concerning 4.5% higher (25 seconds more), worsening from 9 minutes and 8 seconds to 9 minutes and 33 seconds.
Also aggravating this dramatic picture are data on fire deaths involving civilians, which increased by 12.5%, from 16 to 18, from July to October 2023 compared to the same period of 2022. And there were 2,148 more life-threatening incidents reported–from 209,502 to 211,650.
