FDNY Commissioner Blames February Ambulance Response Time Increase On Snow, Ice
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - Ambulance response time to life-threatening situations increased last month in New York City to an average of 11 minutes and seven seconds.
After a hearing at City Hall on Tuesday, FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro was asked why.
"We're all New Yorkers and we can remember back, all the way back to February and what kind of snow and ice conditions we had on some of those days," Nigro told reporters, including WCBS 880's Rich Lamb.
Nigro pointed out the numbers don't include the response times of fire trucks going to the same medical emergency and underlined the city will be adding 45 ambulance tours to neighborhoods where response times are especially high. As Lamb reported, Nigro expects the new additions to trim the average response time by 20 seconds.
In February, the de Blasio administration released details from his new budget proposal that authorizes an additional $70 million over the next five years to put more paramedics on the streets and dispatchers at call centers.
The mayor voiced his frustration in September 2014 after it took 50 minutes for an ambulance to get to an 89-year-old woman who had fallen July 15 and was bleeding from her head in her East End Avenue building's mail room, just across the street from Gracie Mansion.