By Sarah Clark
FOX 4 Kansas City
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For months, emergency response times have been under fire in Kansas City. On Wednesday, Interim Fire Chief Paul Berardi is expected to release district-by-district response times to the Public Safety Committee.
The amount of time it should take for an ambulance to arrive at the scene of an emergency is nine minutes. However, an audit found in November 2011 ambulances arrived at a scene nine minutes or less 84 percent of the time. More recent statistics show that number dropped to 75 percent of the time.
Two years ago, it took paramedics 21 minutes to arrive at Timothy Dufty’s house. He died of a heart attack. His widow says he would have likely survived had he received medical attention sooner. “I think he probably would’ve lived if they had been here on time,” said Danna Dufty, widow. “My brother is a paramedic; he saw the autopsy. He said those first three-to-five minutes are most crucial in a heart attack. He said they could’ve revived him, but he said the damage was already done by the time they got here.”
Full Story: Emergency response times to be released following fierce scrutiny