@mayintoronto Folk call 911 in most of those situations and the operator determines who gets sent.

Often times with health emergencies, fire department and ambulance are deployed, with fire truck responding the quickest. At least in my experience.

I do think the 911 operators need to be better educated with regards to alerting cops, as most folk facing an emergency know 911.

@mayintoronto In Winnipeg if you call 911 for a medical emergency, they dispatch a......

fire truck with a full crew of firefighters and one paramedic.

And then later an ambulance. Maybe.

It's like "Yeah, yeah, chest pain. But don't you think you might also be on fire? We'll send a fire truck just in case, ok? Yep, sending a fire truck right now...."

@CStamp

@Plumbert @mayintoronto @CStamp

I don't know specifically for Winnipeg but in a lot of places fire trucks are city employees while ambulances work for private companies that are contracted to the city...so fire truck paramedics respond faster and have no incentive to (for example) take you to a hospital that's further away because they get paid better there.

@deirdrebeth

That sounds terrible, but is not the root cause here. Both paramedics and firefighters work for the same city department. Having firetrucks respond first goes back to when they reported to different city departments (still the same city, though) and had a budgetary pissing match which the fire service won. There is zero reason for this to still be the case (if there ever was). (Also public health care system, so transport to closest/best hospital.)

@mayintoronto @CStamp

@Plumbert @mayintoronto @CStamp

Well that's something at least. Municipal pissing matches frequently don't end in wins for the residents 🫤