81–90 of 133 posts
> A man in the suburban South watched a chimney fire burn his house to the ground as he waited for the fire department, which billed him anyway and then sued him for $15,000 when he did not pay. Is one typically billed when you have the fire department arrive? I thought it was a public good.
It remains to be seen what impact this has on EMS in the US, but many folks in the industry were surprised that the sale went through as easily as it did. They were already #1 and #2 by a wide margin, the new combined company is staggeringly huge, with no real national competitor (granted, it does have local competition in most markets).
In Ithaca, NY, Bangs Ambulance Inc. is next door to Bangs Funeral Home.
That being said, Bang's is far from a "Wall Street" operation. Like the vast majority of ambulance companies, it's a pretty small mom n' pop shop.
In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you. I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today. I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not a…
This doesn't sound right. I don't know as much about other cities but if you call 911 in Manhattan you're going to be connected to a call center at Metrotech in Brooklyn, a few blocks from where I am typing this, where a real live human who is almost certainly from NYC and lives here will answer your call, determine the precinct and sector and get the job to dispatch. If someone is asking clarifying details it's like…
http://lubbockonline.com/stories/020299/LA0689.shtml#.V2_jIp...
In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you. I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today. I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not a…
Why is that an unreasonable question? People calling in emergencies are generally stressed and often very bad at accurately communicating where they are. A few clarifying questions, even if they don't make sense to you, can go a long way towards verifying the information they're being given.
In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you. I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today. I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not a…
Two weeks ago I called 911 after hearing a loud car crash within a few blocks of my apartment. Took out my phone, placed the call, and listened to music for ~6 minutes before I was able to talk to someone. Once the 911 dispatcher took all of the information I had, the call was transferred (another ~3 minute wait). The original dispatcher introduced herself to my local dispatcher as "911 north".
FWIW, this is a city in the top 30 by population.
In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you. I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today. I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not a…
To add one more datapoint: my personal experience with 911 (called maybe 2-3 times for other people) has all been fast. Mostly responses within 5 minutes, and always within 10. 911 may have a local component and it could be your city being slow.
911 is very much a local service, with significant variation from place to place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This must be heavily dependent on where you live. I've called 911 three times in California. All three times the fire trucks showed up in less than five minutes.
Yep, came across a man standing in a crosswalk in Berkeley who appeared to be dazed and the people with him asked me to call for an ambulance, explaining that the man had been pushed and hit his head on the street. It was probably within two minutes of my calling 911 that an ambulance had arrived and the man was being treated. The other time I called 911 from roughly the same location, the call only rang. I hung up a…
This is so utterly disgusting. The US should look at Germany, once again: we do have private companies managing medical services - usually awarded in 3-5 year contracts, and e.g. in case of Munich, there are multiple companies in addition to the various NGOs (Malteser, Red Cross, Johanniter). All of them have to provide a standardized set of equipment and education for the personnel. Oh, and there's a law that mandat…
Amen, but I am starting to think that this is a cultural thing... civil law vs common law, rhinian capitalism vs Anglo-Saxon capitalism. German private does not mean American private, and that is good in my opinion. A lot of people moan about regulations and strong unions(like with the train conducters recently), but forget how important they are society wide
Even in Germany, the train conductors got a lot of hate, even though Germany has by far the lowest amount of strike days per worker...