A North Haven family has serious concerns about ambulance response times after a 46-year-old father died from a heart attack in August.
“What happened here on Aug. 3, was a perfect example of when there’s a dire emergency in town and all your resources are used,” Kara Keating said, “there’s no one left to help you.”
On Tuesday night, the town of North Haven’s attempt to take over the Primary Service Area (PSA) contract with American Medical Response (AMR) was discussed at the Board of Fire Commission meeting.
“We need change, we need a huge change in our town,” Keating told NBC Connecticut, less than two months since the father of her two children Edward Wenzel passed away.
“We’re still completely heartbroken and devastated,” she said.
Around lunchtime on Aug. 3, Keating said it too more than 20 minutes for the AMR ambulance to arrive at the home on Potter Road after her 20-year-old son called 911.
“He told me that he had found daddy and that I needed to get home right away,” she said, recalling the emotional call she got from her son.
Town officials said there were five incidents North Haven firefighters could not respond to on that day because of a significant fire.
“It was a very poignant and emotional tragedy because we had a major fire in town and all of our fire department resources were at that major fire,” North Haven First Selectman Michael Freda said.
The town is looking to take control of its ambulance service contract, similar to what the city of Milford did in the last year, Freda said.
“Having tracked the ambulance arrival times for over a year, we do see multiple occasions where an ambulance has taken an excess of 15 to 20 minutes to arrive on scene,” North Haven Fire Chief Paul Januszewski said.
The new contract would allow the town to have tighter control over ambulance response times, the fire chief said.
“We define the terms,” Januszewski said. “Because we bid it out to a company quite frankly if they don’t meet the terms of our agreement, we have the ability to rebid it a year later.”
“Let the residents decide who is going to control our emergency services,” Keating said.
Keating said she believes her town needs to hire more first responders, but said a change in ambulance service is also needed to prevent another tragedy.
“They’re not doing the rollover calls to other ambulance services,” she said of AMR. “We have Nelson is at the end of my street, they should have been called and they weren’t.”
AMR’s Regional Director Chuck Babson released a statement to NBC Connecticut.
“We hope to work with the North Haven fire department and town officials to understand what happened in this situation and how we can all work better together to improve any discrepancies in service and record reporting,” Babson said, “while continuing to provide exemplary medical services to the residents and visitors of North Haven.”
Babson’s statement also said “our records show that from the time AMR received the call to Potter Road to the time of arrival on scene was 7 minutes 32 seconds. During this time, AMR was on the phone with the 911 caller, talking him through CPR and we remained on the line until help arrived.”
Keating said she and her son checked phone records. She tells NBC Connecticut that under 8 minute response time was not the case.
