The staff at a restaurant in the Florida Keys are reporting that it took emergency crews over an hour to respond to an emergency call after a customer fainted in their restaurant.
The incident was reported Saturday at Sunset Grille on Canal A Way.
Staff told reporters that a customer fainted in the dining area around 7:30 p.m. and they contacted EMS for help.
General manager Stephanie Sawyer said immediately she knew something wasn’t right:
“I’ve been here nine years and I’ve never had them hang up on me,” Sawyer said. “They always stayed on the phone with me. So that was a red flag.”
After waiting sometime, Sawyer called again for an update but was not given a timeline for their arrival.
“Imagine walking into the restaurant, coming in to eat dinner with your family. You have a manager who is outside in the pouring rain waiting for EMTs to show up,” Sawyer said. “And when you walk in and eat your dinner, there’s a woman laid out on the floor who is waiting for emergency personnel to arrive. And not only did you come in to eat, you already ate your food and left and emergency personnel still hasn’t arrived.”
During the whole ordeal, Sawyer says she contacted them about three times.
The woman’s family eventually decided to take the woman to an urgent care facility themselves.
Reporters reached out to Escambia County emergency services and were told that the incident was an anomaly but there are times when the response is based may depend on the type of call they receive:
“What your viewers need to know is this — if you’re a Delta-level call, the good guys are coming,” Escambia County Commissioner Jeff Bergosh said.. “It would either be an ambulance or a fire truck. The good guys are coming. If it’s an alpha-level call — a fainting incident or a headache — you might have to wait a little bit, but we’re gonna come.”
Bergosh also reported that fire trucks don’t typically respond to alpha-level calls but they are now looking at the current policy to possibly have them do so.
The woman involved in the incident is said to be doing fine, according to Channel 3.