Calling 911

I work at a well known establishment here in Saratoga
where they put on some very nice weddings and this July 4th
was yet another wedding.

This crowd of about 180 guests was a rather rowdy one.
At the end of the evening, Billy Joel’s Piano Man was
playing and everyone was singing along and one guest
decided to get up on her chair and proceeded to get up
on the table when the chair she stood on suddenly snapped
and broke. She came crashing down right on the back of her
head on the ballroom floor. It was quite a sight to see.

A coworker of mine quickly whipped out her cellphone and called
911. The call was placed at 10:24pm. I was rather shocked when this
coworker approached me at 10:50pm and informed me that the ambulance
had not yet arrived.

At 10:54pm I called 911 and demanded to know why EMT workers had not yet arrived.
I was told to hold and then I was transferred, and then I spoke to someone else who asked me where the emergency was. I told the operator the address and told him that
a coworker of mine had already called a half an hour ago. The operator refused to say how much longer it would take for the ambulance to arrive. He said he would have to check to see if the ambulance was on the way. He asked me what the emergency was and sounded unconcerned. I asked how much longer it would be and he did not give me a clear answer and proceeded to conclude our conversation. I was dumb founded.

Finally at 11:03pm the Ambulance arrived. This took WAY TOO LONG. Clearly this is a huge public safety issue and I will follow up Ron Kim, Commissioner of Public Safety on Monday. It should never take this long for an emergency response system to respond. I will keep my readers informed on this issue.