Bystanders had to put a man in the back of a ute yesterday when an ambulance failed to arrive after he collapsed in his vehicle outside Greymouth New World, near Te Nikau Hospital.
"Totally disgusted" passers-by said they had no choice but to take matters into their own hands, and transport the patient about 250m to the hospital.
Brent Foster was sitting in the car park while his wife was shopping at the supermarket when he saw the incident unfold about 4.15pm.
The man, who appeared to be about 70, had been sitting in his vehicle when he collapsed on to the car horn.
"I managed to speak to him for a minute and he said ‘get an ambulance'," Mr Foster said.
A woman dialled 111 for an ambulance, and was told one would be on the way.
But 30 minutes ticked by and no ambulance arrived.
Needing to do something to assist the man, other passers-by helped get him out of the car, and on to the ground.
Mr Foster said a lot of people came to help, and shop attendants cleared a space for the ambulance that never arrived.
Throughout, the man was "shaking like a leaf" and incoherent.
He had been trying to vomit and bystanders had tried to wrap him up to keep him warm.
Mr Foster rang St John to ask where the ambulance was, but was continuously told to hang on, with the assurance someone would arrive. At this stage it had been 45 minutes since the first 111 call.
With no option left, the good Samaritans decided to roll the man on to a cover, lift him on to the back of a ute and drive him the short distance to the hospital.
"It was over an hour by the time we got him to hospital ... he was deteriorating all the time," Mr Foster said.
Upon arriving, the man was rushed into the hospital for treatment.
When they arrived at the hospital entrance, the ambulance was parked there with no-one in it.
"The hospital was right beside us and we couldn't get help from an ambulance ... everyone there was absolutely totally disgusted," Mr Foster said.
St John West Coast territory manager Nils Walzel said Greymouth had one emergency ambulance vehicle, along with a first response unit, which was operated by volunteers when available.
The ambulance was attending another patient at the time.
St John logged the first call at 4.23pm and the patient was triaged over the phone by the emergency call handler as "serious but not life-threatening".
When the back-up Hokitika ambulance arrived at 5.22pm, the patient had already been taken to hospital by bystanders.
"St John encourages the patient to be in contact with us if they would like to discuss this further," Mr Walzel said.
St John ambulances worked as a network, so if one was busy, another ambulance from nearby would respond. In this case, that was Hokitika.
The objective was to respond as soon as possible, with an ambulance if required.
"However, in some cases, when the local ambulance is already attending another patient, as was the case here, there may be a delay in responding to a non-life-threatening incident."
Mr Walzel said the empty ambulance outside Te Nikau was doing a patient handover.
- By Georgia O'Connor-Harding, Greymouth Star
