By Adam Swift
Ward 3 Councillor Anthony Cogliandro wants the council to meet with Acting Mayor Patrick Keefe and a representative from Cataldo Ambulance to discuss issues regarding adequate ambulance service in the city.
“I would like to say that this is in no way, shape, or form to say that the people working for the ambulance companies who save lives every day are doing a bad job,” said Cogliandro at Monday night’s council meeting. “This was prompted when a 10-year-old boy at the Paul Revere School experienced a head injury and the School Resource Officer had to drive him to the hospital because there were no ambulances available. I know we have had our share of issues with having ambulances arrive on time.”
Cogliandro said he would like someone to give the council an update on what the issues are, if there needs to be more hiring for the ambulance company, and if there is anything the city can do to expedite the process.
“At the end of the day, we all know that we need more, and we can’t have what happened to that little boy happen again,” said Cogliandro.
Councillor-at-Large Marc Silvestri said he agreed with Cogliandro, adding that he witnessed a recent event on Malden Street where a man fell in his home and the fire department responded immediately, but it took an ambulance 18 minutes to show up.
“That’s unacceptable; that’s someone’s life and we need to fix that,” said Silvestri.
Councillor-at-Large Dan Rizzo said he has heard a lot about issues with ambulance response times over the past several months.
“I think a lot of it has to do with not keeping up with the demand of our increased population,” said Rizzo. “The services just aren’t there the way they used to be. It’s common sense that the more people you have, you need to increase your services to coincide with that.”
Rizzo said he recently met with an ambulance service that covers communities around Revere, and that there were issues with that service spending too much time providing mutual aid in Revere.
“This needs to be corrected one way or the other,” said Rizzo. “We can’t have our own residents in a time of need have these long wait times.”
Councillor-at-Large Anthony Zambuto said he believed some of the issues stem from the staffing issues many companies have had since the Covid pandemic, adding that the city should work with Cataldo any way it can to help bring in more drivers and EMTs.
