ST. LOUIS (FOX2) — A St. Louis man said it took 10 hours for an ambulance to arrive to help his brother who fell ill Sunday afternoon.
Jesse Shaw’s elder brother, Wilbert, awoke in so much pain he couldn’t move. He’s now in the hospital fighting for his life, the man’s brother said.
“He was just really weak, and he couldn’t walk. He just kept screaming, ‘Oh God, oh God. I’m in so much pain. I can’t take it,’” Jesse Shaw said.
When Jesse Shaw rushed to his brother’s apartment and called 911 around 2 p.m., he hoped to see an ambulance soon after, but ended up waiting hours.
“An hour passed. Two hours passed. Three hours passed,” Jesse Shaw said. “I called back just to make sure. Maybe they had the wrong address or something. They said they had the right address, but just didn’t have any vehicles available at the moment.”
The ambulance ended coming around midnight, which was 10 hours after Jesse Shaw made his initial call for help.
The long wait times are tied to widespread shortage of EMTs and paramedics, according to Josh Ross, the director for Gillespie-Benld Area Ambulance Service.
“The problem we have right now is that there’s just a lack of people,” Ross said.
Staffing shortages are affecting EMT services nationwide. In Illinois, the Gillespie-Benld Area Ambulance Service said it’s experiencing the same issue.
“There was always a good crop of paramedics and EMTs coming out of class — they were eager to get experience and work through the cycle. Right now, we don’t have that. Enrollment is way down,” Ross said.
Beyond enrollment issues, turnover related to wages and benefits is compounding the issue, which is likely to get worse before it gets better, Ross said.
“We’re really reaching a breaking point where you’re going to see people pick up the phone and call 911 for an emergency, and it’s going to be, ‘We’re going to get to you when we can get to you,’ and that’s tragic,” Ross said.
Wilbert remains in the hospital in critical condition. Despite the tests they have run, doctors do not have a diagnosis.
“(I)f this could happen to me, what if something had happened even worse, and there was a loss of life or a fatality because of it,” Shaw said.