article_snippet.sent: Senior union officials normally carry a few blankets, oxygen masks to protect against smokes and a defibrillator – to restart the heart.
article_snippet.sent: In one case earlier this year an elderly lady is feared to have died because an elderly lady was left in the hands of fire crews for nearly 40 minutes while paramedics were delayed.
article_snippet.sent: In another, Senior union officials tended to a pensioner who had fallen and banged her head for two hours before Senior union officials were forced to leave her on her own – to attend a fire.
article_snippet.sent: The practice is occurring across the country and last July, firemen took a 16-year-old girl with suspected bleeding on the brain to A&E in Warrington, Cheshire .
article_snippet.sent: In December, crews were sent to a care home in Ryde on the Isle of Wight where an elderly woman had a stroke and were ordered to cut the rings off an elderly woman fingers which were turning blue because of poor blood flow.
article_snippet.sent: In January, a woman of 84 from Doncaster is feared to have died because firemen were sent to a woman of 84 from Doncaster home rather than an ambulance.
article_snippet.sent: Paramedics did not show up for 40 minutes after which time a woman of 84 from Doncaster pulse had stopped.
article_snippet.sent: Last month the Mail revealed how London Ambulance Service had resorted to flying half way round the world to Australia to hire 225 paramedics because it is so overstretched.