Queens pol wants city to be more transparent about ambulance delays

Queens Councilmember Joann Ariola has introduced legislation that would require the city to notify New Yorkers when ambulances are delayed or unavailable. Wikimedia Commons photo by Kidfly182

By Ryan Schwach

A Queens councilmember introduced legislation that she says would help notify New Yorkers when ambulances are delayed or unavailable.

The Minutes Matter bill, sponsored by Rockaway and south Queens Republican Councilmember Joann Ariola, would require the city to send out a notification whenever FDNY and EMS are experiencing a backlog and don’t have enough ambulances to respond to emergency calls.

Notifications would include information about non-emergency room resources, and would help New Yorkers consider if they should find another way of getting to a hospital. The notifications would trigger if EMS has more than 25 pending ambulances dispatches.

“If there are dozens of emergency calls sitting in a queue because there simply aren’t enough ambulances available to answer them, New Yorkers have a right to know,” Ariola said. “We issue alerts for severe weather, air quality, flooding and other emergencies because information allows people to make better decisions. An EMS backlog should be no different.”

Ariola said the bill was written in response to an increase in EMS backlogs in recent months. On July 2, 600 emergency calls were held and put on a queue because there weren’t enough ambulances available to respond to each call.

“The Minutes Matter bill will bring transparency to our ambulance system while shining a light on a crisis that has been allowed to grow for far too long,” Ariola said. “The problem is that there are too few ambulances and too few people being asked to answer too many calls. New Yorkers deserve to know when the EMS system is under extraordinary strain, and our EMS professionals deserve a system that gives them the staffing and resources they need to do their jobs.”

Tyler Weaver, a former volunteer EMT whose son died of a heart attack, said he waited on the phone as his son’s friends waited more than 15 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.

“Nothing will bring my son back, but let’s help other families avoid his scenario, and bring more sunlight to EMS response time problems,” Weaver said. “After listening to the 911 call audio from my son’s cardiac arrest call from 2023, and hearing his friends perform CPR for more than 15 minutes, while they repeatedly ask the FDNY EMS dispatcher where the ambulance was, you realize that the level of emergency service being provided by the City does not meet expectations.”

The union that represents the city’s EMTs and paramedics is in support of the legislation.

“New Yorkers depend on the life saving services EMS first responders provide and they deserve to know when ambulances are backed up, because that means urgent health care will be delayed for you or a loved one having a heart attack or suffering a serious injury,” Local 2507 President Michael Greco said. “Transparency about delays is not an indictment of anyone. It is how a responsible city fixes a problem that must be solved for its people.”

The bill now sits in the City Council Committee on Fire and Emergency Management, which Ariola chairs.