After crashing his bike on a Pitt Meadows road on Sunday, Richard Stefani lay on the ground with serious injuries and waited more than an hour for an ambulance.
“I knew there was something fractured, I was having a hard time breathing,” Stefani said.
His cycling group called 911 while Bill Lealess, a former captain for the Vancouver Fire Department, held his neck.
“I don’t think there (was) any confusion at all, I wasn’t expecting to do C-spine for over an hour,” Lealess said. “I’m on my hands and knees in the middle of the road and Rick’s very uncomfortable in the middle of the road – in pain.”
The priority level of the call was eventually raised, but only after 45 excruciating minutes had passed and someone made a second call for help.
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“When I laid there for an hour, I had a brain contusion, I had a punctured lung, I had a shoulder fracture,” Stefani said.
He also had two broken ribs.
According to B.C. Emergency Health Services, the situation was not life or death.
“Anything that we would consider a pre-hospital, life-or-limb emergency is responded to appropriately. The problem we’re dealing with in the service right now are what we call the longer waits where patients are not in a life-threatening situation,” Linda Lupini of B.C. Emergency Health Services said.
The Paramedics Union said a lack of funding by the province is a big part of the problem.
“This is government’s job – to put an ambulance service here in B.C. – and they need to do that appropriately and adequately, and if they don’t, people are going to die,” Bronwyn Barter, of the Ambulance Paramedics of B.C., said.
Stefani is now left to wonder if his road to recovery will be longer after being left hurt on the ground for so long.
“We’d like to be able to feel as though the response is timely, it’s orderly, it’s professional,” he said. “This looked like to me that it didn’t work.”
– With files from John Hua
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