Reporter Brian O’Connell took a trip out with a paramedic crew from the Dublin Fire Brigade’s Ambulance Service for Today with Sean O’Rourke. He joined guest host Damien O’Reilly to tell him what he saw along the way.
He teamed up with District Officer Peter Navan and in the first 10 minutes, they had received a call to respond to a suspected overdose and another concerning a woman who was unconscious, possibly due to alcohol. Still early evening, Peter said this was not unusual.
“If we took alcohol out of the equation, I’d say our bed crisis in the hospitals would be gone overnight. An awful lot of our ambulance cases are as a result of alcohol abuse.“
Brian told Richard that Peter believes “the drug issue is beginning to get back to where it was in the 1980s”, the key difference being that medics now have medication that can reverse some of the effects of the drug, giving patients who have overdosed a “significant” chance of surviving.
“You have to reverse the effects of whatever they’ve taken. Unfortunately, when we do reverse the effects and they come around again they sometimes refuse to travel. They can go off, they can overdose again quite soon afterwards.”
As well as ambulance calls, the crew also responds to fire calls. Brian spoke to a woman whose house was fire-bombed. The house had escaped major damage thanks to a quick-thinking neighbour who saw the impact and doused the fire with water before it fully ignited. The occupant of the house was shaken, saying the people who had thrown the petrol bomb had threatened her with a knife.
“A petrol bomb was thrown at my door. For what reason, I don't know. I rang the Guards and the Fire Brigade. The lads [emergency crews] came up. My neighbours helped…The youths that done it booted in the door and booted off the locks. I got a whack in my head and myself and my friend were holding the door closed…then next of all…they thrown a petrol bomb.”
The occupant praised the quick thinking of her neighbour.
“I thought community spirit was gone but I was proven wrong.”
Listen back to the whole segment on Today with Sean O’Rourke here.