LIVES AT RISK

It is crucial that they move quickly and safely, making split-second decisions about routes, precautions, and care for those in need. However, emergency service workers say their jobs are being made increasingly more difficult by Jamaica’s crumbling road networks, which not only burden them with costly repairs but also jeopardise the lives of those relying on urgent assistance.

Ambulance workers, police officers and firefighters – all working in the government service and speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of victimisation – all bemoaned the hazardous state of the nation’s roads as they spoke with The Sunday Gleaner last week.

“Especially the routes that lead to the hospitals! they are very poor!” bemoaned Shevelle Stone*, a 15-year emergency medical technician (EMT). “Taking a patient to the University Hospital of the West Indies or to Andrews Memorial, say, someone with a spinal injury or broken leg, we have to crawl because the road surface is not level and there are many potholes.”

Stone said “Our response time is also delayed. For instance, for a patient with a stroke, we have what we call the ‘Golden Triangle’ – a three-hour window within which that patient needs to get to the hospital for assistance. If that window passes, the chance of that person recovering fully from that stroke is limited.

“That person can die on you, or their recovery might be minimal. So they won’t have a 90 or an 80 per cent recovery. You would find that they may walk with a limp or their speech might not return for a long period,” said the EMT, emphasising that transporting patients visiting the island for medical treatment between hospitals and the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston is also a dangerous task because of the road conditions.

Neither Stone nor The Sunday Gleaner could confirm an instance in which an ambulance patient was harmed because of treacherous routes, particularly following the passage of a hurricane, a tropical storm and severe weather systems in recent months.

PROBLEMATIC CAPITAL CITY

Nonetheless, she noted some Corporate Area roads were particularly problematic, including the Sir Florizel Glasspole Boulevard between Carib Cement and the Jamaica Flour Mills. So, too, is Hope Road, in the vicinity of the Sovereign Supercentre, Stone added, stressing that Spanish Town Road – from Seaview Gardens westward – is “horrible”.

Ambulance driver Matthew Lodge*, who is based in the Second City, finds the western end of the island equally dire. He said extreme care has to be taken when transporting patients in St James and other western parishes.

“We do a lot of runs from Iberostar [hotel] to Cornwall Regional and other facilities. And if you are driving the ambulance, you have to be very careful because the road will practically throw you off of it,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.

“It is worse in peak-hour traffic because even with the sirens, the motorists can’t get to shift over properly because of road conditions,” he said, noting that debris left along the roadway by work crews adds to the chaos.

“There are patients with spine injuries, women who are in labour, and if the ambulance, jerks you know what will happen. So we have to take all of those things into consideration,” said Lodge, who had been a tour bus operator in St James for years before moving to ambulances.

Though the company he works for is insured, he still fears potential lawsuits being filed against him.

“It doesn’t matter how the road is. They (relatives) just want to know that their people reach where they are going safely. But you can’t guarantee that if the roads are not good,” he continued, adding that in addition to taking the requisite strap-down procedures, heeding the advice of EMT specialists travelling in the back, and carefully navigating the roadway, an effort is also made to advise patients and their relatives of the implications beforehand.

Sixty main roads and some 600 priority roads across 63 constituencies have been identified under the Government’s $45-billion Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Improvement to Our Road Network programme, with $3 billion earmarked for the REACH road rehab initiative.

“Currently, patching efforts are under way across various constituencies, and these activities will be significantly escalated in coming days to address the backlog of repairs,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the House of Representatives recently. “The phased nature of the programme remains as previously outlined with each constituency allocated $20 million for the necessary roadworks, including pothole patching, small-scale rehabilitation, and minor drainage improvement.”

Those improvements are not coming fast enough for Andrew Bernard*, a firefighter serving parts of St Catherine, where he said memorising potholes, particularly in Portmore, is imperative. And even those being fixed present other nuisances – from cutting of the surface around them in preparation for fixing to rubble left behind by workmen.

“Memorising potholes in Jamaica is a skill that you have to develop, especially if you are driving emergency vehicles, because neither pedestrians nor drivers nor animals respect the siren on the fire truck. They are just doing their own things the same way,” said Bernard.

“It is like you have to drive for everybody and yourself, while you are responding to the emergency to save somebody or something. It is mentally taxing. If you make two or three drives in a shift, especially if it is peak hours, you are drained, just based on how you have to deal with people and the road network,” he said, singling out the I-95 and sections of Independence City; almost all roads in Spanish Town, which he said are extremely narrow; and sections of the Braeton main road.

Frequent punctures

due to potholes

“Braeton Road needs to be resurfaced. No roads are there, so you are driving and looking for a piece of road to put the truck on,” he said.

One policeman in St Catherine noted that service vehicles in his division are punctured quite frequently due to the potholes. When that happens, he said a patrol team is stranded, waiting up to an hour for the divisional transport managers to turn up on location to assist with something as basic as changing a tyre.

This, he explained, is because many of the service vehicles do not have the tools to change tyres. In some cases, however, there are motorists who are quick to assist the police, and that, he said, is commendable.

But if the service vehicle has other front-end issues, it could be out of commission for days, he added.

The cop also pointed to problematic areas in Portmore and Spanish Town.

“The road conditions also cause the response times to be slower. Many times we can be going through the traffic with the sirens, and the motorists are not moving. When we reach up the road we realise it is because there is a big hole up there,” said the special squad operative, who has spent more than a decade in the Constabulary.

“Patching is also a problem because sometimes when you go to the tyre shops, they tell you that they don’t have the contract, and they don’t want to patch the tyre, per se, because the Government won’t want to pay them their money. So that may take you hours to get rectified,” he said, flatly rejecting the suggestion that the cops pay for minor patches from their own pockets.

“That is what we are not going to do. We not going to do that. That is not our responsibility!” he said, blatantly.

Earlier this year, Superintendent Andrew Nish, the police commander for Hanover, complained that potholes were affecting crime fighting as it was slowing down the police’s response time to incidents. While not singling out any particular agency, he expressed hope that his plea to have the road conditions addressed would be heard by the right people and generate a speedy response.

*Names changed on request.

corey.robinson@gleanerjm.com