London Ambulance Concern

The BBC reported on a London Ambulance crew that refused to take an ill woman to hospital. She died later that day. This should be a concern for all who live in London and I think a formal inquest should be considered. This is what I get as I interpret the story: A crew refused to take her because she soiled herself. She was stricken with sickle cell anemia and could not move. A second crew was called and took her to hospital.

Here are questions that need to be answered. Why was the first crew allowed to not take the woman? If you are seriously ill and can’t walk what procedures are in place by LAS that permits a crew to deny services? How did the second crew decide to transport? Where there changes in the woman’s condition? I have to think that all communications between the landlady who called and all radio transmissions are recorded. Are they to be made public? And what of the woman’s family? Do they not deserve to know why LAS preformed the way they did? At any time was a supervisor called or monitored the situation?

I find this entire situation upsetting and you should too. The government has put in place a program to protect the public. The police, fire and ambulance service are trained to respond to situations to prevent death and destruction. Should something go wrong, an investigation needs to be started. In this case one is by LAS but a person has died and an independent investigation may be in order. Maybe I am over reacting but this could have happed to anyone and everyone should believe that those working to protect are doing so.

London Underground Error

This BBC news story tells how passengers were left off at a closed tube station during a strike action. The train came to a stop at Canada Water and the doors opened. No one got on but several passengers got off only to find no way out. One thing I find disturbing about this article is how confusing it was to read. It illustrated what had occurred on several dates and I was left confused as to what occurred on a specific date. I have other questions that should have been brought into the article.

Once the passengers exited the train and found the exits closed. Was there any indication that another train was coming soon? Was there no indication to the driver that the station was closed? As the passengers were probably away from the platform be this time probably not. Was no staff person viewing this on CCTV? Monitor stations are off site (I think) but somebody in security should have known.

Passengers had to exit by climbing out of a fire escape. Were there no alarms when the escape hatch was opened? It was reported that a member of staff did spot them and helped them. Did he help them out of the fire escape? Why did he not just open the doors? Did he have any way of communicating with the passengers? Maybe it's just me but a lot is missing in this story.

This could have been bad. What if a passenger got injured during the escape? What if a passenger was in a wheel chair? Do fire escapes handle wheel chairs? Did the fire escape have an Oyster touch pad? In my lame attempt to inject humor that comment does try to illustrate a point. London Underground has a vast arsenal of equipment and electronics to monitor its system to prevent theft, fire and loss of life. The inquest on the 7/7 bombings shows that the system can be improved but in this case the system should have been in place. I would hope that tube bosses do not just scoff this off as “driver error” but use it to learn that things can go wrong and look for ways to prevent it from happening again. This did happen on several occasions so maybe they are not making this a priority. Tube passengers need to know that if something goes wrong they will not be left on their own. As for the BBC I think they could have done a better job it reporting this.