Australians Suffering EMS Shortage

A SECOND person has died from a heart attack after firefighters turned up to treat the victim because no ambulance crews were available.

A 28-year-old man died at his home, just 200m from Nambour Hospital on the Sunshine Coast, on Wednesday. It took 15 minutes for an ambulance to arrive -- outside the 10-minute State Government benchmark for life-threatening cases.

A Queensland Ambulance Service spokesman said there was above-average demand for ambulance services at the time of the emergency.

This follows the death of Peter Crane, 76, at his Bribie Island home in almost identical circumstances in February.

Firefighters responded to an emergency call, but could not save his life.

His wife, Shirley, rang Triple-0 after Mr Crane, an acute melanoma sufferer, began haemorrhaging from the lungs.

''About all they could do for my husband was keep him company while he bled out. It was pretty awful for them, as well as us,'' Mrs Crane said.

''If this keeps up, the fire brigades are going to start losing volunteers and then where will we be? No ambulance or fire brigade? Sending the pizza delivery man probably isn't too far down the list of possible alternatives.''

Mr Crane's case was raised in State Parliament by Opposition emergency services spokesman Ted Malone.

''When will you admit your policy of sending ill-equipped fire crews to what are clearly ambulance emergencies is failing?'' Mr Malone asked Minister Pat Purcell. Mr Malone also said fire trucks soon would carry defibrillators to cover for absent ambulances.

There was similar controversy on Bribie Island a year ago when firefighters had to attend emergency calls from three heart attack victims due to a lack of ambulances in the area.

Two of the patients died. A third was given oxygen until paramedics arrived.

Premier Peter Beattie said at the time that it was normal practice for fire crews to attend medical emergencies if there were no ambulances available.

''This system is a good practice. It operates in at least three other states. It has been operational since the early 1990s and is about saving lives,'' Mr Beattie said.

Mrs Crane said an ambulance did not arrive for more than 30 minutes and by then it was too late to save her husband.

She wrote to Mr Purcell last month -- the Minister initially denied in Parliament that he had received her letter, but later corrected the record.

''If my house is burning down, I will be only too happy to see them,'' she said of the firefighters. ''However, a person with a medical emergency who dials Triple-0 for an ambulance does not want to see the house full of firemen.

''The event is traumatising enough without adding to that the knowledge that the ambulance could be a long time coming. All in all, it is a very unsatisfactory situation.''

Mr Purcell wrote to Mrs Crane -- a letter she described as patronising -- and a QAS assistance commissioner and a colleague met her to discuss the issue.

Mrs Crane said the pair told her about 1 per cent of patients would get an initial response from firefighters.

''That adds up to 1000 people who are in for a shock -- still an awful lot of people who don't get an ambulance when they ask for one,'' she said.

''They didn't disagree that they don't have anywhere near enough resources to cover all eventualities; they can only do what they have the funding to do.''

Mr Malone said in many of the 1000 cases, it would be volunteer fire crews turning up.

''No one's arguing they won't do their best. But when we're paying $100 a year in Beattie's ambulance tax and many two, three and four times over, it's not good enough especially when Beattie promised us the best ambulance service in the world,'' he said.

''The real question for Beattie and his minister is how many of the 1000 Queenslanders will die because a fire truck, rather than a fully equipped ambulance with trained paramedics, is dispatched?''