By Charlie LeDuff
myFOXDetroit.com
DETROIT — “The people in this city are dying and who else is going to say it? Who?” Wisam Zeineh once remarked.
He is one of the most committed paramedics and vocal critics of the Detroit ambulance system.
“The Detroit Fire Department is the worst fire department in America. I say it loud, and I’m certainly not proud,” he said in 2010.
“I can’t sit back and let people die,” he told us in 2011.
“New Year’s Eve in Detroit. Shots fired everywhere. No units available. Trucks breaking down,” he later said in 2012.
For years he’s been telling you how your safety has been shortchanged by incompetent bureaucrats feeding at the taxpayer trough while you’re loved ones lay dying on a sidewalk waiting for an ambulance that comes late and increasingly not at all.
“She (said), ‘Grandma, they still (haven’t gotten) here,’ and she (said), ‘He really can’t breathe,’” one woman told us.
“When I called, the lady said (we’ve) got somebody on another call,” another woman explained.
“It’s ridiculous, man. Somebody was dying, the should’ve been here like ASAP,” a man said.
Now Zeineh joins at least two dozen other medics who have quit in recent weeks on a city government that seems to have quit on you, Detroit. Savage cuts to public safety now mean a bee sting can lead to death. A city where the wheels literally fell off the ambulance not two days ago that was traveling at a high speed down the highway.
Zeineh plans to stay in Detroit working to improve your health care, but after ten years on the job, he tendered his resignation.
“To whom it may concern, the current state of this department is an absolute disappointment and will no longer haunt my mind. Please accept this as my two weeks notice, and I will fulfill my obligation. It’s a shame so many have paid the ultimate price for your failures. Their blood is on your hands. With love, Wisam Zeineh, paramedic,” he said in his letter.
Now this is the part of the story where I tell you I reached out to the mayor for an explanation as to why the ambulance system is so deadly. You know what they told me to tell you? “Nothing.”
Republished with permission from My Fox Detroit