It took two hours for ambulances to reach victims in Paris

by philg

“The Long Night” is a disturbing New Yorker article on the Paris attacks. Here’s one of the worst parts:

A few medical workers came to the scene almost immediately. Le Petit Cambodge and Le Carillon, which also came under fire, are down the street from l’Hôpital Saint-Louis, one of Paris’s largest hospitals. But because of the number and severity of the attacks, and a confusion about whether the killers might still be at large, it took nearly two hours for ambulances to begin evacuating people. [emphasis added]

6 thoughts on “It took two hours for ambulances to reach victims in Paris”

  1. Memory is a leaky substance, but I seem to remember that it also took 2 hours before the ambulance with on the crash site carefully stabilized (but effectively by then already dead) Diana Spencer reached the American Hospital in Paris in 1997. At the time some reporter inquired about the delay, but was told that it was done correctly, and that French ambulances effectively are equipped for, and the personnel qualified to undertake resuscitation at accident sites with least possible by-effects due to transportation. But of course, the Paris Bataclan et al massacre of two weeks’ ago, was a special case, so the police may have prevented ambulances and onlookers from approaching the sites until the fog of crisis confusion started to lift (off).

  2. Perhaps the ambulance drivers are afraid to break the speed limit.

    We spent some time in Paris just before the attacks and, upon returning home, received a gift in the mail from the government of France. In three double-sided sheets of French legal mumbo-jumbo, they informed us that a robot traffic camera had decided to penalize us for an alleged speed infraction. The fine is substantial and increases with delays in payment.

    I have spent many years in francophone countries, so my fluency made it easy to decipher the letter. There was NO English, so a typical tourist might not understand the meaning until the next time they try to enter France.

    We have had many fond trips to Paris and the rest of France, and upon hearing of the attacks, we resolved to return soon. Those plans have now changed, and we will be spending our travel time elsewhere.

  3. ianf is correct. French (and European) EMS is weird, particularly for North Americans, who are used to the idea that the ambulance shows up, grabs the patient, and leaves the scene. This isn’t really true anymore in most jurisdictions over here — paramedics and EMTs will do certain things to make the transport safer — but it’s really not true in France, where they’re sending physicians and specialist equipment to the scene of major incidents and performing the bulk of the stabilization in the field. We can go around and around and around over whether this is a good thing or not without ever arriving at a solid conclusion: I’m not aware of any research that suggests French or European outcomes are any better or worse than North American outcomes based on this difference alone.

    Not having read the article referenced I’m loathe to make any judgment, but I’d say that given the scenario on November 13 — gunfire, explosions, etc., — delays in reaching patients had more to do with scene safety issues rather than structural problems with SAMU organization. That’s a guess, but it’s a reasonably informed one.

  4. The lesson from all of these shootings is that the police need to go in immediately -the shooters will go on shooting and shooting until they are killed or their ammo runs out. If the police spend an hour “formulating a plan” many more people will die while they are getting their act together. However, those who will die will not be policemen. (American) firemen are trained to run right into a burning building if there are people inside but the police don’t seem to think that getting shot at is part of their job description.

Comments are closed.