One of the main problems with the LAS at the moment is the lack of vehicles, in the past this has come to mean that there is not enough staff to man the vehicles that we have, or fill the rota to maintain safe cover over our area. Lately however we haven't had the vehicles physically present. At the moment, for I am typing this from work, I am looking out the window at the fitters, whose job it is to maintain the fleet in our area of London. There are 13 ambulances waiting to be fixed. There are three crews sitting on station, unable to take any calls because their vehicle has broken down. Someone has just visited us in the staff car (a nice little Corsa), and on attempting to leave its clutch has broken.

Today I took an ambulance from West Ham over to Poplar to replace a vehicle whose steering had broken. Then two management brought over a spare vehicle from Newham for me to work on - a vehicle that had just been fixed for a broken rear suspension.

(Let me tell you, riding on an ambulance with no suspension is an 'interesting' experience - you get thrown around and the cupboards fly open spraying bandages and other, less soft, equipment around the cabin)

This 'fixed' ambulance lasted three jobs before the suspension died again and I was bouncing around the cabin. It also stalled if you closed the choke.

So now I'm sitting on station twiddling my thumbs, unable to continue my daily grind of saving lives picking up drunks.

The Fleet is just falling to bits, the new Mercedes have faults developing around the 5,000 miles mark and the tail lifts are extremely temperamental (like my experience yesterday, they fail at the worst possible moment). The LAS needs a cash injection so that it can have a fleet of basic, but reliable ambulances, fully equipped and fully manned.

In a change of subject I met some American student nurses outside the Royal London today - They were interested in how the LAS was run. As I'm starting to get some idea of self-promotion I chatted to them for a while and then pointed them in the direction of this blog. If you are one of those nurses - "Hi there!"

First off, I'm bloody knacked, frazzled, chin-strapped, and generally tired. If I ramble just poke me in the ribs with a stick.

Today was both bloody awful and rather good fun, which despite sounding like the ramblings of a madman is a perfectly sane way to describe today, although I'll be glad for today to be over.

The day started badly, I woke 3 minutes before my alarm was due to go off - so I turned it off and woke for the second time 10 minutes before my shift was about to begin. I didn't get much sleep last night so I suspect my body overruled my brain to give me an extra 50 minutes of sleep.

Luckily when I wake up with an adrenaline jolt like that I can get washed, dressed and speeding through the streets of Newham like Linford Christie on meth-amphetamine.

Turning up at the station I found out that my regular crewmate was ill, and instead a 'Team Leader' was being sent to work with me. Team Leaders are on the lowest rung of management - they are the people who are supposed to keep 'the troops' in trim, and so spend considerable time moaning about the speed at which we get to jobs, and the poor quality of our paperwork. I'm of the belief that if management don't know about me, I can't get in any trouble - so working with a new Team Leader was something I was less than happy with.

I had barely gotten to say hello to 'Team Leader' than we got our first call of the day, a 'suspended' (cardiac arrest) a couple of miles from station. Manoeuvring a big yellow taxi through rush hour traffic is no fun at the best of time, but as I was driving I gave it my best shot - we got to the scene shortly after our First Responder who was already bagging and giving CPR to an obese woman in her eighties. As we were in one of the new yellow ambulances I lowered the tail lift, got the trolley out and nearly ruptured myself lifting the patient onto the trolley bed. Rolling her out to the street, we got her on the tail lift and raising it, rolled her into the back of the ambulance. All that was left was for me to raise the tail lift and rush to hospital.

You may notice I spent some time discussing the tail lift - this is because as I went to lift it, the hydraulics failed and it was stuck, sticking 7ft out from the rear of the ambulance at a height of about 4 foot from the floor.

I gave it a kick, a shake and then resigned myself to manually lifting the bloody thing up, all while the crying relatives were watching me pumping the manual handle like an idiot. Finally it was raised to the closed position, so I made my way rapidly to hospital while 'Team Leader' and 'First Responder' worked on the patient on the back. I'll not mention the road closure than forced me to make a painfully wide detour, but otherwise we reached the hospital with some speed where the woman was unsurprisingly declared deceased.

After a quick tidy-up of the back of the ambulance (which after a cardiac arrest always looks like a bomb-site) we got a job to a 'unwell child'. The 15 month old child was indeed unwell although not life threateningly so. The assessment was made harder by the mother having very poor English and the child having 'Development Delay' - which encompasses a multitude of syndromes and genetic/biological causes.

The next job was a transfer from the local maternity department to a maternity department in another county. This is a hospital that I had no idea how to get to (the details of why there was a need for transport are too boring to go into, also I think I might say something about the mother I'd regret in the morning). I set our travel computer to give me directions to the hospital and we set off. The journey was supposed to be 9.8 miles, but after following the computers directions to the letter we had travelled 37 miles along rather crowded motorways.

We had taken 30 minutes longer than we had planned. It's the last time I trust that bloody machine. 'Team Leader' was not happy at the computer but we laughed it off.

The next job was a simple maternity which we drove into the London Hospital - this was fine until I managed to drive into another ambulance when trying to leave the hospital. No damage to my ambulance, and minor damage to the other, but as my first accident in over 18 months, it was obvious that it would happen when 'Team Leader' was sitting next to me...

Returning to fill in the accident paperwork, Control asked us to attend to another call - this time it was an obese unconscious 70 year old female. She was extremely heavy, and because of her 'floppiness' was a complete dead weight. Once more I nearly killed myself in lifting her. All her body functions and observations were normal so it was a complete mystery why she was unconscious - although I could confirm that she had been incontinent of urine...

...after I put my arm in it.

All these problems throughout the day meant that we worked harder than we needed to - and yet, throughout the day we had a great time as we laughed and joked between patients and vowed never to work together again. I said that I'd take sick leave, saying I was 'stressed' and 'Team Leader' said she would make sure I got sent to the other side of London before she worked with me again.

And so, at the end of the shift we parted, laughing at the thought that it was possible we could be repeating the experience tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to that possibility.

Two London Firefighters have died in Bethnal Green, the LFB have an excellent safety record with the last death in their service being in 1993. Although we often jokingly moan at the Fire Service we are also aware that they choose to run into burning buildings, and it takes a certain kind of person to do that.

I would imagine that every LAS in East London is wondering if they had worked with those two men, on a fire call, or an RTA extrication.

My thoughts go out to those affected, their family, friends and workmates.

The Big White Taxi Service website (the very unofficial LAS website) is having a collection for them.


We are collectiing funds to go towards helping the victims of the E2 fire in which 2 Whitechapel Fire-Fighters were killed today.

You can donate via:
Paypal, (sales@londonbwts.co.uk)
NOCHEX, (webmaster@londonbwts.co.uk)
personal cheque, cash or postal orders. (we have a PO Box)

Please mail us firefund@londonbwts.co.uk for any further info.

Thank You

One of the things that will constantly amaze me is that some people will drop dead at the drop of a hat (so to speak), while others will survive injuries that would kill us mere mortals.

Today was a case in point, we got called to a 39 year old female who'd been hit on the head by a brick which had fallen seven floors. We turned up at the location fully expecting to see someone with less of their brains inside their head than would be considered healthy. Instead the woman was sitting in a chair (having had a C-Spine collar applied) with he head supported by a BASICS doctor.

This woman, who should have been dead, had a one inch cut to the top of her head.

And that was it.

The brick had hit her on the head, then had hit the floor with such force that it essentially shattered. Yet here she was complaining of the cut being painful. There was no loss of consciousness, but we treated her as if she had a neck injury, purely due to the 'mechanism of injury'. It's been a while since I've had to do a 'standing take-down' (where you get a standing patient onto a spinal board by placing it against their back and laying it flat with them on it, you don't need the swimming pool that is in the link...) but it all went smoothly, the Doctor travelled with us and was a pleasure to work with.

Although she is 39 the woman actually looked like she was in her early twenties - perhaps she has some witchy super powers? Either way she was discharged later in the day.

Either way she was exceptionally lucky - if you can call getting beaned by a brick 'lucky'.

Blimey, I do moan sometimes...

I'm afraid that occasionally (very occasionally) I'm not my normal happy-go-lucky killer of little old ladies. I think I've tied down what it is that had me so depressed yesterday.

1) This is the sixth day of work, and I've had to get up early in the morning.
2) Hungry, I was definitely hungry.
3) The weather is very dark and dismal - where has our summer gone?
4) I've got a runny nose, guess I'm fighting off some form of infection.
5) Lack of sleep.
6) The lack of anything approaching 'sickness' in the flood of patients who desperately need an ambulance.

So there is my excuse. Does it work?

So today, it's the seventh day at work, I'm still hungry, the weather is unchanged, as is the slight runniness of my nose and I am, as ever tired.

So what could cheer me up? How about a sick person.

Nope, none of that today...

Of the jobs that I can actually remember, we had a drunk on a bus, a 20 year old man with three hours of diarrhoea, someone who had tripped up a stair (no injury), a kid who'd fell off his bike (no injury) and an RTA with no injuries.

The only notable call was getting sent to a 72 year old female by a local GP with a diagnosis of CVA; the GP hadn't actually seen the patient, and had diagnosed over the phone - he was rather obviously wrong in his diagnosis (it was an rather blatant UTI), but we know this doctor well - he is a twunt.

RTA - Road Traffic Accident
GP - Primary health provider
CVA - Stroke
UTI - Urinary Tract Infection, bladder infection

Some unusual jobs today, the first call was to a concrete company (which will remain nameless - no doubt they have better lawyers than I). We were told to meet with the Police and Fire Service at a RVP (meeting point). It turns out that some animal liberation types have taken offence to this company (rumour being they are supplying to concrete to a new animal testing lab), and have sent some deactivated incendiary devices to various branches in order to scare them. Today in three of the offices across London some 'suspicious packages' had turned up, and we were being sent to cover the defusing of these devices. Two ambulances, one Duty Officer, three fire engines and countless police were there, standing around the, now evacuated, offices. Our Duty officer started allocating 'Major incident' roles to everyone. I don't think he wasn't best pleased when I asked him why, when major incidents are designed to deal with multiple casualties, we needed to play that game when the only person in any danger in the now deserted office was the bomb disposal officer.

He sent me to arrange the parking of the emergency vehicles.

We were soon stood down however, when it was discovered that the 'device' was actually a packet of envelopes.

The next call was to two brothers who had fought over possession of a bong, with one brother trying to sell it to a third brother. Both we and the police were sent, when we got there both brothers had calmed down and there were no serious injuries. One policeman was confused about what a bong was used for, until I explained that it was 'drug paraphernalia'. One of the brothers told the policeman that he was selling it because he didn't use it - he much preferred smoking his cannabis in a spliff.

Luckily for him the policeman ignored this massive blunder (and me collapsing in tears of laughter at this idiot essentially confessing his drug habits).

Our next interesting job was to a man in Docklands who had a head injury caused by trying to avoid an attacking seagull. It turns out that there is a seagull living there who dive-bombs people passing by. This man had ducked the avian attack, then tripped and fell flat on his face, knocking himself out. He had only minor facial injuries, but the loss of conciousness will mean a short stay in hospital being watched. My old crewmate suggested that he sell his story to the newspapers.

The rest of our jobs were rather boring after this early excitement.

Today was extremely windy, one of the things that I learnt when I was pretending to be a teacher was that if there is high wind, the kids will go nuts. It's not just the children that go crazy, it seems some of the adults will go mad as well. On my first job, a grand total of seven pedestrians leapt out in front of my ambulance. I managed to miss all of them which was a minor miracle as I hadn't had my early morning cup of tea - and was therefore not properly awake, and in a bit of a foul mood. Luckily I had the 'pride of the fleet', a decrepit model LDV with the acceleration of an arthritic snail.

My mood wasn't helped by the 14 year old boy who, having been slapped by his stepdad, called the police and an ambulance. The boy (who has been permanently excluded from school) had an argument with his stepfather, who had then slapped him on the neck. Absolutely no injury at all, and I'm sure my buttocks had gotten worse than that when I was a kid. This stroppy child had wasted the time of four policemen and an ambulance - all because he had probably misheard some of the recent debate about smacking.
My personal view is that children are like puppies, they sometimes need the shock of pain to learn a lesson - all the 'hippy' ideals of the eighties have bounced back as teenagers who have no respect for discipline.

It's not just the children either, one of our jobs was to a school where a twelve year old boy had been in a fight, his sister, who was about 25 years old was there with her friends, and she was shouting about how she was going to beat up the kid that had hit her brother. My crewmate decided that the best thing (given that the hospital was no more than 1000 yards away) was to ignore her comments and get them offloaded onto the hospital as quickly as possible. I was grinding my teeth the whole way, the sister was extremely aggressive and constantly 'mouthing off' about how she was going to cause trouble. When we got to the hospital she asked me 'where's the toilet?', and I must admit it took a serious effort of will not to ask her where the 'please' had gotten to. The last we heard of her, was her shouting in the childrens waiting room "I ain't gonna f**king turn off my mobile, I read in the paper it don't do f**k all to the machines".

She could do us all a favour by stopping breathing.

But it wasn't all bad, we had two calls, one after another to an 'Arthur'. Neither of these two elderly men were particularly ill, but both were very likable. One had a habit of inserting 'f**k' in the middle of sentences, as in 'My pills are in the f**king cupboard over there'. Arthur doesn't mean any offence by it, it is just the way he is, we occasionally get people like him and you can have a nice little joke with them in the back of the motor. That this habit of swearing is the same one my crewmate has, and that Arthur looked like how my crewmate could look in 30 years, only added to the fun.
The second Arthur lives in a warden controlled flat, and when we turned up a woman was fussing over him, when we asked him if it was his wife he replied, ' If I had married her, I'd have topped myself by now'. The woman was actually his warden as was quite bossy.

Not a bad day (no-one died on us today), I'm working the same shift for the next six days, so we'll see how it goes tomorrow.

So, after the assessment, the training and the first time racing around the streets of London being sworn at, you finally end up on your own, in a new part of town where you are expected to get to emergency calls in eight minutes.

I got posted to Newham, which is a ten minute drive from where I live; but unfortunately I'd never driven there and my navigation was awful. When I told my new workmates where I lived they thought (after, 'If he lives there I wonder if he'll steal my car?'), 'Good someone who knows the area'. This was before the days of satellite tracking where you just have to follow the dulcet tones of the computer (Sometimes in Danish if some bright sparks has reprogrammed the computer); in those days you had a mapbook and were expected to get on with it.

Gradually you get to know the streets, where the regulars live, the pubs that are 'trouble' and where the 6'6" width restrictions are. You then have to counter every threat the 'natives' throw at you.

For instance, I might be driving a big white (or bright yellow) van, covered with flashing lights and 'ambulance' written on the side, occasionally - if I feel like pushing out the boat, I'll even have the sirens going. You might expect people to get out of the way; instead pedestrians will be drawn to run out in front of you, like a particularly dimwitted moth to a flame. People in cars will suddenly develop selective blindness, and idiots with Drum 'n 'Bass pounding out stereos worth more than their car will argue that I should make way for them.

Drivers will pull out from side turnings in front of you, and as for the bizarre ideas some people have as to the best way to clear a path for us (jump on the brakes, swerve in front of us, sit there and panic), well, it's a good job we often don't have far to travel.

However there are benefits to driving an ambulance; driving on the wrong side of the road (at a top speed of 20mph mind you) still makes me happy, driving over kerbs is often a giggle, and lets face it, who wouldn't like to treat red lights as a 'Give Way'?

Despite popular belief, we don't actually go that fast - we can't, we never know when some young mother is going to push her baby buggy out in front of us. At best I think we have a maximum speed of 40mph, not only for our safety and the safety of other people, but purely because the worn out ambulances that we drive have an acceleration that would embarrass a milk float, and a top speed of..oh...about 42mph.

I once got on a motorway and 'opened her up', we got up to 70mph (downhill naturally) before the front of the ambulance started lifting up and the steering became a trifle 'unresponsive', luckily I managed to stop screaming in sheer terror enough to regain control.

Most of our accidents (as a firm) come from reversing, I've *cough* occasionally reversed into pillars and lampposts; one person I worked with managed to reverse into a low-flying balcony. I have on at least two occasions gotten stuck in a width restriction (I swear, one day I'll get our 7'2" ambulance through a 6'6" restriction - I just need to get up a decent head of speed before tackling it). Thankfully our ambulances are so old and battered that small amounts of damage just add to the character of the vehicle.

Of course all that has changed with the new yellow Mercedes Sprinters. Or at least it would if they haven't all started getting faults around the 5,000 mile mark. Our station had three of the new ambulances, now we have none. They are all either being patched up, or shipped back to Germany to have major repairs done. Current reports are that the fibreglass back is splitting from the metal chassis - possibly due to the number of speed-bumps we have to contend with.

Speed-bumps - Good idea in theory, but in practice they slow us down by a hell of a lot, wreck the ambulances, and in five years time I intend to go on permanent sick leave because my kidneys have been shaken out through my mouth. My plan to get local councillors thinking a little more sensibly about speed-bumps would be to strap them down on a spinal board and drive them through the streets - I think they would be begging for mercy after five minutes.

Parking is a nightmare in Newham as well, we often have a line of traffic parked on either side of the road, making side streets effectively single track routes. When we get a call for a 'Chest pain' (you know, the sort of thing that could be a heart attack), then we have no choice but to park in the middle of the road, blocking any other traffic. At no point do we engage in the 'how much traffic can I stop' game - we don't like confrontation at all, we like a nice quiet life, so we aren't trying to wind people up on purpose.
Unfortunately some people don't see it like that and will sit there honking their horn at us to get a hurry on. To be fair I tend to spend a maximum of 10 minutes on scene, and if you honk your horn at me, I'll then change my working speed to 'go slow' (patient condition willing obviously).

I think it's incredibly rude to think that your journey is more important than that of an emergency ambulance.

Don't you?

I'm off to work now to drive around those selfsame streets...wish me luck, and if you see me in your rear view mirror, please get out of the way by pulling over and stopping on the left of the road.