Worst place possible for ambulance branch
“It would top the list of the worst places to locate an ambulance branch,” was the stunned reaction of a Warragul resident to the announcement Warragul will get a second ambulance station to be built in Burke St.
Bill Smits has fired off letters to Premier Daniel Andrews, Health Minister Jill Hennessy, Opposition Leader Matthew Guy, Shadow Health Minister Mary Woolridge, local members of parliament and Baw Baw Shire Council pleading with them to put a stop to the plan.
“Tell me this is not true and is some sort of error,” he pleads.
A vacant property at 144-162 Burke St service road is earmarked for the new facility.
Mr Smits doesn’t live on Burke St but uses the road regularly.
He claims the proposal is contrary to Ambulance Victoria’s duty of care to paramedics and two Key Performances Indicators (KPIs) – patient response times and patient outcomes – in its charter.
The site is almost opposite the entrance to Marist Sion College, one of five schools in Burke St.
Mr Smits said there is major traffic congestion in the area particularly around school start and finish times with total enrolments at Marist Sion, Warragul Regional College, St Joseph’s primary school, Warragul and district specialist school and the Good Start Early Learning Centre topping 2300.
He said the three main accesses to and from Burke St to north of the railway line also hampered traffic flow, and therefore ambulance movements.
Two of them, at Lardners Track at Drouin East and Coleman St just east of the new ambulance station site, had controlled railway crossings with flashing lights and boom gates and the Howitt St-Burke St T-intersection was the main link into the Warragul town centre from Princes Freeway.
Burke St also has three controlled school crossings and two lengthy sections where speed limits were down to 40 kilometres per hour for three hours on school days.
Mr Smits said a new commercial precinct soon to open near the corner of Howitt and Burke Sts, with entry/exit onto Burke St would further add to bottlenecks.
“Burke St becomes a virtual car park, especially around school start and finish times, and the person that signed off on the (ambulance station) project has never sat at the location”.
If “the powers that be” think this is not an issue for an ambulance operating with lights and siren on they are being grossly irresponsible, Mr Smits stated in his letters.
They have not taken into account patient response times, care and the possible outcomes due to delayed pre-hospital care provided be paramedics, he added.
“Patients could die as a result of these failures”.
Mr Smits said he was not a paramedic but understood the pressures they are under during emergencies after more than 30 years’ experience as a crew member on the Gippsland Helimed and on a retrieval helicopter working in north-west Australia.
He claimed many other people living in and around Burke St and frequent users of the road shared concerns about the location of the ambulance branch.