Ambulances struggle to cope with huge volumes of emergency calls in Hampshire

3:10pm Thursday 24th December 2009

By Will Carson

AN elderly man lay helpless on a pavement for more than two hours waiting for an ambulance as emergency services struggled to cope with the big freeze that hit the south.

Passers-by and shopkeepers rallied round the pensioner, believed to be in his 60s, after he fell on an icy pavement in Rumbridge Street in Totton.

They covered the man in blankets and comforted him until an ambulance service first responder arrived at around 11.30am.

Eventually he was moved into a nearby shop on a spinal board borrowed from a local leisure centre.

One witness said: “A group of people gathered around the man to help out but he had fallen badly and they were too scared to move him in case he had hurt his back.

“An ambulance was called straight away but they were told there were 11 ambulances dealing with 40 call-outs already.

“The man was lying half on the pavement and half on the road, and the rain had started to run down the gutter on to him.

It was one of a number of incidents as temperatures plummeting to as low as minus 10C brought chaos to the region.

Overstretched ambulance crews received 301 calls in three hours yesterday morning – more than the 250 they usually attend in an entire day – and called in reinforcements from neighbouring counties.

Hospital accident and emergency units were also inundated with patients who had suffered falls due to the conditions, dealing with more than twice the usual number of patients.

In Southampton police responded to more than 100 incidents related to the weather conditions in the space of four hours.

Worst hit was the main motorway through the south the M27, with an 18- vehicle pile-up forcing police to shut the westbound carriageway at Rownhams services for more than two hours.

Trains were unable to get out of depots in Eastleigh and Bournemouth as a result of freezing to the tracks. Teams of engineers were also sent out along parts of the network to de-ice the track.

Bus services in cities and towns across the region were also non-existent for much of the day while Southampton Airport was closed for several hours due to ice on the runway.

Those who attempted their journeys on foot fared little better with slippery pavements and streets prompting health chiefs to issue a ‘stay at home’ message to residents.

Meanwhile a spokesman for South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS), which earlier this year was rated weak by a Government watchdog, said it struggled to get to the stranded pensioner quicker because it had been under “severe pressure” due to an increase in call-outs due to the weather.

He said: “All qualified clinical staff were out on the road responding to emergency calls, including our divisional director who is a qualified paramedic.

“Adverse weather conditions meant we were taking longer to get to locations due to the poor driving conditions caused by the weather.

“Our priority was to get to people safely and this meant that journeys took longer than they would normally.”

The spokesman added that crews dealt with more than the number of accidents they would normally treat in an entire day.

The service was already under a ‘severe’ level alert, just one under a major incident.

Between 6am and 10am yesterday the service dealt with 82 emergency calls to people who had suffered falls compared to around 62 calls in an average day. The SCAS also received 16 calls to road traffic incidents when normally they would expect to see 16 in a whole 24-hour period.

Patients were urged to attend walk-in centres and GP surgeries to avoid putting more strain on ambulances.

Steve McManus, chief operating officer at Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust, thanked his staff and said: “We have seen a tremendous increase in visits to our emergency department this week, with a very high number of people injured as a result of slips and falls.

Yesterday, more than twice the normal number of patients have arrived in our ED.”

He added that planned operations and procedures could be affected as a result of the increase in emergency cases.