Comment by harmmonica | Hacker News Reader

Comment by harmmonica | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Always poor form to use an anecdote to shed light on an issue, but I once "cried wolf" to the SFFD because I thought a homeless person was in an emergency situation.

I was walking on (upper) Market St when a woman, sitting on a stoop, screamed out for help. I turned, saw her and then saw a flight of stairs behind her. She was wailing as if she'd just fallen down the stairs. I ran over to her, asked if she was ok (she was lucid so I figured she could tell me what had happened), but she just stared up at me screaming. I called 911 and told them what I thought had happened. The fire department, big rig and all, pulled up in about 2 minutes (station close by, but amazing response time, really) and the moment the first fireman hopped out of the truck you could just see the exasperation on his face. He made no urgent rush over to the woman. He just looked at me and asked if that was the woman and explained that they'd already been out to see her earlier that day, and many times in the past. I felt terrible, but of course had no way of knowing. Fireman just patted me on the back and said I did the right thing.

The moral (from an unnecessarily long story): it's almost impossible to know what's an emergency in these situations.

My thought (reading this on HN where I ignorantly think tech can solve everything) is to say that 911 calls in SF should include a picture of the person, but that's not sensible, of course, because seconds can sometimes literally be the difference between life and death.

Anecdotes aren't poor form at all unless you're asserting that a single instance characterizes the system.

They're very helpful in giving context to data, and are commonly done by scientists etc. and called 'case studies'.

Requiring a picture seems like a little much, but having the option of some sort of video chat for 911 calls (maybe like Facetime with a cellular audio call fallback) seems like it could provide a number of benefits, both in eliminating false alarms, and giving first responders more situational information that would help them respond appropriately.

Taking it a step further (in the tech can solve anything world), it might be interesting if emergency responders could send some sort of push notification to people inside a certain geofenced area and ask them to provide a live video feed of the situation as well.

Dreaming here, but I wonder if someone from the Periscope team could go around mid-Market/Tenderloin and try and get people to do exactly what you're describing. Spread the word: "Need to call 911? Use Periscope to educate the 911 dispatcher about the problem." Visit shelters, offices, etc. in a 1/2-mile radius or something and ask people to do it. Of course you then get into an issue where the 911 dispatcher is not the person who would actually know the street-level specifics, but you're right that there would seemingly be countless benefits. Tackle it from both sides, maybe, and talk to the city while you're at it (as slow as things move, the only way to actually change things is to start).

Right. I'd definitely share the video feeds not only with the 911 dispatchers, but with local fire, police and EMT workers, so everyone is on the same page and could provide additional insight from their knowledge of the area and/or specific people.

The Houston Fire Department is doing an experimental project that is pretty similar to what you're describing, only they have first responders deploying the video conference with online medical control in order to avoid transporting patients that don't need it, and to link them to primary care services if that would be helpful: http://www.houstontx.gov/council/h/committee/20140821/ethan....

One thing I wish this article would have touched on is what's featured in the caption to the photograph-- the ability for FD/PD to transport low-risk patients who are just drunk or high to sobering centers rather than to EDs. It's a fairly novel approach, and has made the quality of care provided to these people (and those others in the ED who actually need to be there) way better.

Your example starts well - a person with a need, another person tries to do the right thing - and then ends predictably poorly - emergency responders refuse to provide needed medical treatment.

Street triage for people with complex mental health needs is important money saving work that improves lives.

The problem is that our society is unwilling to actually step back and look at the root problems so we know where to expend energy most effectively at providing solutions.

Our social problems are ones that no single magic bullet can fix (except in the sense of destroying the problem by ending it all). If we want to be an advanced society we need to understand that every issue is a symptom. There is no one single cause, no one single solution. There are many contributing factors and each needs it's own solution that incentives the outcome we'd prefer to see.

Why is someone homeless on the street? Is it because housing is too expensive, there aren't enough jobs, they lack the skills for jobs that do exist, are they suffering from untreated illnesses (including mental), or is it some combination of those plus other issues that I didn't happen to list.

The above issues are also not in themselves entirely the causes of those issues. Our society is a complicated web of situations, and failure is both always an option and omnipresent among endeavors.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com