Something similar happened to a friend of mine. In San Francisco. I just sort of assumed it was just bad luck. Bad things happen occasionally even in good systems. But maybe that assumption is wrong? Is this a thing? Are ambulances just unreliable?
>my dad is dead, because his family members were too naive to know that the thing they were instructed to do by the state was a false thing.
We're told a lot of things by "officials" not because it's correct, but because it holds the least legal liability for official parties involved, especially anything involving healthcare. These officials also sometimes include doctors, who work to protect themselves and the system first, and then patients.
Healthcare funding is managed provincially and the Ontario government has been poorly managing the system, pretty consistently, for over a decade. Some would argue decades, but things do seem to be steadily declining post Covid, as they were pre-Covid. Over the last few years, several ERs have been experiencing intermittent closures, and at least one was closed permanently, due to staff shortage.
What's worse is that the closures are poorly communicated. I know of at least two people who, within the last couple of years, went to an ER only to find it closed.
With respect to Toronto, and more specifically ambulance services, they are jointly funded by the province and the city, but I understand that provincial funding is more significant.
All parties recognize things are not functioning well, and various attempts at increasing spending have been made, but any effort will take significant time before results are visible. I'm not particularly optimistic, and the current provincial government's track record here is dismal. Their policy is to be tight-fisted.
like in many places people live too scattered (higher density would provide more healthcare facilities closer to people), service costs are enormous, and productivity is abysmal
I’ve been reading Influence by Robert Cialdini and just finished a disturbing section about how we are wired to obey an authority figure even when it causes harm. In this instance, the 911 dispatcher was the authority figure. Sad story.
> my dad is dead, because his family members were too naive to know that the thing they were instructed to do by the state was a false thing.
Hindsight is 20/20.
There are also cases where people died because they didn’t wait for the ambulance. So without proper statistics that‘s a dangerous conclusion.
I work as an EMT (911) and resourcing is certainly a problem. In my small city, our response time is around 5 minutes, and if we need to upgrade to get paramedics, that’s maybe another 5-10.
However, if we are out on a call, out of service, or the neighboring city is on a call, now the next closest unit is 15+ minutes away.. sometimes there can just be bad luck in that nearby units are already out on multiple calls that came in around the same time, making the next closest response much further.
for a heart attack or unstable angina, the most an EMT will do (for our protocols) is recognize the likely heart attack, call for paramedics to perform an EKG to confirm the MI, administer 4 baby aspirin to be chewed and/or nitro (rx only), and monitor closely in case it becomes a cardiac arrest. If medics are far away we will probably head immediately to a hospital with a catheterization lab, or rendezvous with medics for them to takeover transport.
The few goals though:
- recognition (it could also be something equally bad/worse like an aortic aneurysm).
- aspirin to break any clots, assist administering nitro if prescribed.
Losing family is hard, but losing them suddenly makes it harder. Losing them suddenly because of poor advice or (in)action of people who are supposed to help is yet more difficult. I know from experience.
There's another scenario where someone heads to the hospital and get stuck at a red light or behind and accident or you're speeding and kill someone. It's just hard to know sometimes which path to pick when you don't have a guaranteed outcome on either one.
In any case, I'm sorry for your loss. My dad died too due to a heart attack, except he was alone.
Thanks to this I looked where my nearest ER is and found that it's 7 minutes away, so I can't imagine calling an ambulance for my wife unless I was worried about her spine. (I don't think she can lift me so the reverse isn't true.)
I lost my brother to a heart attack aged 50, but he died immediately. In the end it was very quick, but he had warning signs for years. Look after yourselves, people.
I can speak to this. I recently joined a community first responder association (I've always wanted to know what to do in case of a medical emergency) and was shocked to hear the members' horror stories of how long it can take an ambulance to arrive. Like the author, I grew up with the narrative "in trouble, call the ambulance, they'll scream through the streets to get to you in moments".
That might still be true where I grew up, in the US, but that's certainly not a guarantee in Melbourne, where I now live. On joining the local volunteer organization, I went from thinking "oh this will be a useful bonus for the community" to "wow, we can literally be essential". Since our org is composed of people living within the community, average response time to ANY call is <5 minutes (lower for cardiac arrest, when people really move). Sometimes one of us is right next door.
We can't do everything an ambulance paramedic can, but we can give aspirin, GTN, oxygen, CPR, and defibrillation. We can also usually navigate/bypass the usual triage system to get the ambulance priority upgraded to Code 1 (highest priority, lights + sirens, etc.) If for some reason the ambulance is far away (it backs up all the time), we can go in the patient's car with them to the hospital, with our gear, in case of further issues in transit.
I tell everyone now to always call us first (since our dispatcher will also call the ambulance) but while I feel more confident in how I'd handle an emergency, I feel less safe overall, with the system's faults and failings more exposed, and the illusion of security stripped away.
My condolences to the author.
In terms of updating - consider whether The System is really working. If not, what can you do yourself (or within your larger network) to better prepare...
Even in the US, response times can really vary. As an extreme example, in Jersey City (population ~300k) there were a bunch of incidents a couple years ago where residents called 911 in an emergency and no one answered.
Melbourne has an excellent ambulance response time (defined from the moment 000 call is received to when the first ambulance resource arrives on scene):
* Average Code 1 response time: 12 minutes 47 seconds
* Code 1 responses within 15 minutes: 77.2%
* Number of Code 1 first responses: 12,375
This places Melbourne among the faster councils in the state, and well ahead of the statewide average response time.
When everything is far apart, or you live away from a city, that is definitely true. This is one of the cons of living outside the city. There are many perks, but this one is a con for me for sure. Especially because I have MS and I do not drive nor have a car.
My sincere condolences to the author. Wishing you strength and peace.
I once saw a man have a heart attack on the beach, less than a 5 minutes drive from a fire-station and rescue team. A helicopter arrived after 45 minutes, and the man was deceased already. That was in Martinique, french Caribbean.
There's a need for an app to let patients track the ambulance. It's been possible for 10+ years, as seen with Uber. It seems existing products have focused on tracking only for the purpose of managing a fleet, missing the focus on patients needs.
> my dad is dead, because his family members were too naive to know that the thing they were instructed to do by the state was a false thing.
The primary goal of the state is to ensure the power of the state is perpetuated. It's really the only goal of the state, anything it does good for its people is a side effect in its pursuit of maintaining power.
The government doesn't care about you, doesn't care about your health, your children's education, your safety, your house, your job, anything else about you except in as far as they provide conditions for people sufficient to avoid large scale civil unrest and threat of government losing authority. If individuals get crushed in the machine, nobody gives a shit, least of all the government.
This is the reason vigilantism is viewed so harshly by the state and tends to attract much more attention and harsher punishment than a crime that was not motivated by justice. Not because the outcome for a victim of vigilantism is any different, but because the act threatens to undermine the authority of the state in application of justice.
The biggest perpetrators of atrocities and injustice, war, murder, theft, genocide, death and suffering through negligence and incompetence, has been the state and agents of the state. Everybody should be critical of everything the government, politicians, bureaucrats, "experts" tell you at all times. Consider they can and do lie and cover-up as easily as a person drinks water, consider motivations, and explore outcomes and alternatives and consider what is best for you, your family, your community, your society. Use your common sense, don't prejudice your ideas with what gets repeated about things. Develop plans accordingly, or at least spend a little time to think about these things.
This is not "conspiratorial". The actual conspiracy theory would that those in government are conspiring to actually help the people foremost. Anybody who puts forward that kind of crazed unfounded conspiracy theory had better come up with air-tight evidence, otherwise they'd just be peddling far-something ultra-something disinformation.
It is terrible to lose a relative in young age.
But at least 80% percent of all heart diseases are known to be fully avoidable. The risk factors are known for ages and as matter of fact every adult is fully responsible to care for his own health. The right thing to do, is to watch out for a healthy diet.
Such a tragedy, and I'm really not surprised it happened in Canada. Our healthcare system here is utter garbage and there isn't really any political will to do anything about it because "it's better than the Americans at least" (it's not). I don't buy that it's underfunded either, it's just sorely mismanaged and nobody wants to build or grow. Even a child could tell you if you increase the population of a country by 10% in ten years, you also need to grow its infrastructure by at least that amount - but our political class are idiots and haven't even considered it. After all it's not "green" to build more hospitals. And thus we get situations like this where there literally aren't enough ambulances to handle the load.
I'm sorry if I'm ranting under a post about a father's passing, but tragedies like this are so avoidable that it practically sends me into a rage. This person should still be alive, she should still have her father. Fuck sakes.
Not 10% population increase in ten years, it was 10% population increase in 3 years. (An increase in immigration rate of 4x over those three years compared to the previous 20 years - makes the USA's southern border influx look minor in comparison)
And the population increase wasn't spread evenly across the country...
This is a very tragic story and my heart goes out to the family. It's one I've seen a few times now and hear about on a very regular basis from my coworkers.
I am a Canadian Paramedic (EMR soon to be PCP in a few months, roughly equivalent to EMT and AEMT respectively). Some things strike out at me:
- Here in BC our calltakers can advise patients on some treatments. I'm sure if that were to happen here, they would have advised the family to administer some ASA (Aspirin) to the patient which would have bought valuable time until professional care could be reached. Even if it was found to be contraindicated, the fact it was not mentioned in the blog post stands out to me.
- I'm not familiar with the geography of Toronto or its normal traffic patterns, but it's surprising that a single ambulance was not 30 minutes from the patient driving lights and sirens at that time of night (shortly after dinner).
- Fire crews here in BC are dispatched to severe medical incidents (like heart attacks) and most of the time can even beat ambulance crews to a scene. They would have been able to provide CPR if needed, possibly even ASA or Nitro depending on their scope. So again it's surprising that there's no mention of them. Perhaps they aren't dispatched to medical calls in Toronto?
- Lastly it's surprising that the calltaker had no visibility on where the dispatched crews were at. At the very least they could have radioed the crew to get an ETA. I guess I just take it for granted that over here we are tracked as soon as we sign in to our vehicle (it's a safety thing especially in some of our more rural/remote stations). If the ambulance was just about to reach the patient right before the family decided to go to the hospital on their own, things might have turned out differently.
Also since I'm assuming that a large percentage of HN readers are older males who are at risk of a heart attack (due to factors like working desk jobs and not keeping up with fitness as much), read up on the signs and symptoms of a heart attack and keep a bottle of aspirin at the ready. Bodies are complicated and weird and you never know.
I’m so sad to see this. For anyone who reads this, get a day, learn CPR, and buy that machine if your parents or whoever has history of heart issues. The machine doesn’t fix every kind of heart diseases but the trainer told me it decreases the possibility of death from a heart attack greatly. I recall that the possibility is lowered by 50% if you do CPR and 80% with the machine.
It is not hard to use the machine as it has clear instructions. They probably expect you to still be able to read when in panic.
75 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 90.1 ms ] threadI bet he's proud of you for writing and sharing this to help others.
We're told a lot of things by "officials" not because it's correct, but because it holds the least legal liability for official parties involved, especially anything involving healthcare. These officials also sometimes include doctors, who work to protect themselves and the system first, and then patients.
What's worse is that the closures are poorly communicated. I know of at least two people who, within the last couple of years, went to an ER only to find it closed.
With respect to Toronto, and more specifically ambulance services, they are jointly funded by the province and the city, but I understand that provincial funding is more significant.
All parties recognize things are not functioning well, and various attempts at increasing spending have been made, but any effort will take significant time before results are visible. I'm not particularly optimistic, and the current provincial government's track record here is dismal. Their policy is to be tight-fisted.
Would be interesting to see everyone who jumped in here yesterday [1] to comment on this one as well.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45889297
Hindsight is 20/20. There are also cases where people died because they didn’t wait for the ambulance. So without proper statistics that‘s a dangerous conclusion.
I work as an EMT (911) and resourcing is certainly a problem. In my small city, our response time is around 5 minutes, and if we need to upgrade to get paramedics, that’s maybe another 5-10.
However, if we are out on a call, out of service, or the neighboring city is on a call, now the next closest unit is 15+ minutes away.. sometimes there can just be bad luck in that nearby units are already out on multiple calls that came in around the same time, making the next closest response much further.
for a heart attack or unstable angina, the most an EMT will do (for our protocols) is recognize the likely heart attack, call for paramedics to perform an EKG to confirm the MI, administer 4 baby aspirin to be chewed and/or nitro (rx only), and monitor closely in case it becomes a cardiac arrest. If medics are far away we will probably head immediately to a hospital with a catheterization lab, or rendezvous with medics for them to takeover transport.
The few goals though:
- recognition (it could also be something equally bad/worse like an aortic aneurysm).
- aspirin to break any clots, assist administering nitro if prescribed.
- getting to a cath lab.
Losing family is hard, but losing them suddenly makes it harder. Losing them suddenly because of poor advice or (in)action of people who are supposed to help is yet more difficult. I know from experience.
It does get easier to deal with, in time.
In any case, I'm sorry for your loss. My dad died too due to a heart attack, except he was alone.
I lost my brother to a heart attack aged 50, but he died immediately. In the end it was very quick, but he had warning signs for years. Look after yourselves, people.
That might still be true where I grew up, in the US, but that's certainly not a guarantee in Melbourne, where I now live. On joining the local volunteer organization, I went from thinking "oh this will be a useful bonus for the community" to "wow, we can literally be essential". Since our org is composed of people living within the community, average response time to ANY call is <5 minutes (lower for cardiac arrest, when people really move). Sometimes one of us is right next door.
We can't do everything an ambulance paramedic can, but we can give aspirin, GTN, oxygen, CPR, and defibrillation. We can also usually navigate/bypass the usual triage system to get the ambulance priority upgraded to Code 1 (highest priority, lights + sirens, etc.) If for some reason the ambulance is far away (it backs up all the time), we can go in the patient's car with them to the hospital, with our gear, in case of further issues in transit.
I tell everyone now to always call us first (since our dispatcher will also call the ambulance) but while I feel more confident in how I'd handle an emergency, I feel less safe overall, with the system's faults and failings more exposed, and the illusion of security stripped away.
My condolences to the author.
In terms of updating - consider whether The System is really working. If not, what can you do yourself (or within your larger network) to better prepare...
* Average Code 1 response time: 12 minutes 47 seconds
* Code 1 responses within 15 minutes: 77.2%
* Number of Code 1 first responses: 12,375
This places Melbourne among the faster councils in the state, and well ahead of the statewide average response time.
Source: The Victorian Parliamentary Budget Office’s 2025 report: https://static.pbo.vic.gov.au/files/PBO_Ambulance-funding-an...
When everything is far apart, or you live away from a city, that is definitely true. This is one of the cons of living outside the city. There are many perks, but this one is a con for me for sure. Especially because I have MS and I do not drive nor have a car.
I once saw a man have a heart attack on the beach, less than a 5 minutes drive from a fire-station and rescue team. A helicopter arrived after 45 minutes, and the man was deceased already. That was in Martinique, french Caribbean.
There's a need for an app to let patients track the ambulance. It's been possible for 10+ years, as seen with Uber. It seems existing products have focused on tracking only for the purpose of managing a fleet, missing the focus on patients needs.
The primary goal of the state is to ensure the power of the state is perpetuated. It's really the only goal of the state, anything it does good for its people is a side effect in its pursuit of maintaining power.
The government doesn't care about you, doesn't care about your health, your children's education, your safety, your house, your job, anything else about you except in as far as they provide conditions for people sufficient to avoid large scale civil unrest and threat of government losing authority. If individuals get crushed in the machine, nobody gives a shit, least of all the government.
This is the reason vigilantism is viewed so harshly by the state and tends to attract much more attention and harsher punishment than a crime that was not motivated by justice. Not because the outcome for a victim of vigilantism is any different, but because the act threatens to undermine the authority of the state in application of justice.
The biggest perpetrators of atrocities and injustice, war, murder, theft, genocide, death and suffering through negligence and incompetence, has been the state and agents of the state. Everybody should be critical of everything the government, politicians, bureaucrats, "experts" tell you at all times. Consider they can and do lie and cover-up as easily as a person drinks water, consider motivations, and explore outcomes and alternatives and consider what is best for you, your family, your community, your society. Use your common sense, don't prejudice your ideas with what gets repeated about things. Develop plans accordingly, or at least spend a little time to think about these things.
This is not "conspiratorial". The actual conspiracy theory would that those in government are conspiring to actually help the people foremost. Anybody who puts forward that kind of crazed unfounded conspiracy theory had better come up with air-tight evidence, otherwise they'd just be peddling far-something ultra-something disinformation.
I'm sorry if I'm ranting under a post about a father's passing, but tragedies like this are so avoidable that it practically sends me into a rage. This person should still be alive, she should still have her father. Fuck sakes.
And the population increase wasn't spread evenly across the country...
I am a Canadian Paramedic (EMR soon to be PCP in a few months, roughly equivalent to EMT and AEMT respectively). Some things strike out at me:
- Here in BC our calltakers can advise patients on some treatments. I'm sure if that were to happen here, they would have advised the family to administer some ASA (Aspirin) to the patient which would have bought valuable time until professional care could be reached. Even if it was found to be contraindicated, the fact it was not mentioned in the blog post stands out to me.
- I'm not familiar with the geography of Toronto or its normal traffic patterns, but it's surprising that a single ambulance was not 30 minutes from the patient driving lights and sirens at that time of night (shortly after dinner).
- Fire crews here in BC are dispatched to severe medical incidents (like heart attacks) and most of the time can even beat ambulance crews to a scene. They would have been able to provide CPR if needed, possibly even ASA or Nitro depending on their scope. So again it's surprising that there's no mention of them. Perhaps they aren't dispatched to medical calls in Toronto?
- Lastly it's surprising that the calltaker had no visibility on where the dispatched crews were at. At the very least they could have radioed the crew to get an ETA. I guess I just take it for granted that over here we are tracked as soon as we sign in to our vehicle (it's a safety thing especially in some of our more rural/remote stations). If the ambulance was just about to reach the patient right before the family decided to go to the hospital on their own, things might have turned out differently.
Also since I'm assuming that a large percentage of HN readers are older males who are at risk of a heart attack (due to factors like working desk jobs and not keeping up with fitness as much), read up on the signs and symptoms of a heart attack and keep a bottle of aspirin at the ready. Bodies are complicated and weird and you never know.
It is not hard to use the machine as it has clear instructions. They probably expect you to still be able to read when in panic.