The tragic accident of a nine-year-old boy who suffocated while playing continues to occupy and touch many people. As reported, the boy had played with other children on Saturday afternoon, November 14th, on the grounds of the former elementary school in the Karlstadt district of Laudenbach (Lkr. Main-Spessart) and unhappy strangled himself with a dog leash.
But how quickly were rescue workers on site? A resident from Laudenbach turned to this editorial office and said: The first ambulance did not arrive until about half an hour after the notification, shortly afterwards the second ambulance and the ambulance. “Absolutely incomprehensible,” says the Laudenbacher. According to the legal basis for the rescue service in Bavaria, that would have been far too late. There it says, “that every place of action on a street as a rule has to be reached within a driving time of no more than twelve minutes or, in sparsely populated areas with low traffic, exceptionally in up to 15 minutes”.
As inquiries from the editorial team revealed, there was an emergency in Zellingen almost simultaneously on November 14th. Because the ambulance that would normally have come to Laudenbach was in action there, the ambulance responsible for the Arnstein area took over.
30 minutes until the ambulance and ambulance arrived?
The resident reports that his wife called him that late afternoon because “something had happened”. He lives directly above the site of the former elementary school. “About ten minutes after the accident” he walked there and for 20 minutes witnessed two young police officers “making sacrifices to resuscitate the boy”. Even if he did not look at the clock, he was sure that it took so long for the first ambulance to arrive.
How much time actually passed? The integrated rescue control center is a facility of the city of Würzburg: Its spokesman Christian Weiß has the exact data on the operation: According to this, the emergency call from Laudenbach was received by the control center at 16:19 and 32 seconds. The “first forces” were deployed at 4:22 pm. Both the ambulance from Arnstein and the ambulance who came from Gemünden would each have taken 16 minutes to the scene of the accident. So the arrival was at 4:38 p.m. ?? so 18.5 minutes after the emergency call.
This is how the alarm works
Why it can take two and a half minutes after the alarm for the ambulance to drive off, explains Dr. Matthias Sauer, the medical director of the rescue service in the Würzburg area and thus also responsible for the Main-Spessart and Kitzingen districts.
When the beeper goes off on the rescuers, the mission announcement comes. That alone takes around half a minute, says Sauer. The rescuers see a so-called incident report image on the display. You will be informed in writing of the location of the emergency. The navigation system shows you the way. At the push of a button, the rescue workers then confirm that they have received the entire emergency call. The ambulance can long have been in motion by the time the paramedic sends the acknowledgment.
The medical director says he does not have the specific dates of the mission in Laudenbach. The ambulance could not have been in Arnstein when the emergency call came. According to the route planner, the journey time from there to the former Laudenbach primary school is 26 minutes. As soon as the Karlstadt ambulance is deployed, the rescue control center will order the Arnstein ambulance towards Thüngen, says Sauer, in order to be able to reach the area there promptly. So in this case too, says Sauer. The control center acted optimally.
Why wasn’t the helicopter used?
The Laudenbach resident, who turned to the editorial staff, cannot understand why the boy was driven to Würzburg in an ambulance even though the rescue helicopter was there. According to the Würzburg press spokesman Christian Weiß, the helicopter came from Bad Mergentheim (Main-Tauber district).
Emergency physician Matthias Sauer has a general explanation for transport in an ambulance: It is very tight in a helicopter to use a ventilation tube and cardiac massage. Even if a patient becomes stable after an initial on-site treatment, resuscitation may be necessary again during transport to the clinic. The emergency doctors would take this into account in their decision, as well as the distance or weather conditions.
The helicopter would take off and land in a minute, according to Sauer. As a rule, patients are therefore always first cared for in an ambulance. They would then have to be relocated for the flight. If the patient then has to be brought from the roof of the Würzburg University Clinic to the children’s clinic, another five minutes would pass.
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