Weather planning needed for ambulances

Dear sir - During the recent severe weather conditions that besieged the country, HSE National Ambulance Service crews faced extreme difficulties in reaching their patients in areas that where affected by heavy snow falls. The situation was compounded by the lack of resources available to the National Ambulance Service to help ambulance crews cope with such hazardous driving conditions. This is a totally unacceptable situation. We had ambulances not able to get out of stations because of a failure on the part of management to foresee these issues. You would think after last year's snowfall they would at least have made provision for the possibility of another Arctic winter. Garda cars were supplied with snow socks, and even ESB crews had snow socks on their vehicles, but not emergency ambulances. Paramedic crews the length and breadth of this country struggled in dangerous conditions to reach their patients and some are lucky not to have been seriously injured or killed. HSE should have also followed the UK's NHS line and advised the public through the media not to request an ambulance unless absolutely necessary. Our members are already at full stretch to cope with the increasing demand for emergency ambulances and to meet the internationally recognised eight minute response time targets without the additional pressures of trying to do so without the proper safety equipment for driving in such conditions. What's even worse is the Major Emergency planning office falls under the remit of the HSE but where was the planning in all of this chaos? We should now be planning for the future months that may very well hold another arctic spell. At the very least a list of all HSE Ambulance stations throughout the 26 counties should be submitted to local authorities with priority given to keep the egress routes clear and gritted for emergency ambulances and snow tyres or socks should be purchased now and held for future use, common sense dictates this and the HSE Ambulance service should be proactive and not reactive to such foreseen circumstances. Yours, Derek O'Rourke, National Secretary, National Ambulance Service Representative Association, Sallins, Co Kildare.