The fire service will perform more emergency resuscitation and unusual rescues as ambulances are stretched thin, according to the senior officer for Angus.
The Courier last week reported how an off-duty fireman used public access defibrillator equipment to help restart an elderly man’s heart in Arbroath, in tandem with a nurse giving mouth-to-mouth.
Local senior officer Colin Grieve told an Angus Council committee how Scottish Fire and Rescue is looking to deliver “more public benefit” as the first emergency service on the scenes of accidents.
Mr Grieve said he anticipated that non-fire call-outs will rise “as we start to deviate from our more traditional role” of fighting fires and rescuing people from cars.
“As we move forward to how we give public benefit, I would expect our numbers would have to rise,” he told the scrutiny and audit committee in Forfar.
“We will attend things like gaining access to locked premises when someone has fallen behind a door.
“The latest one you might have heard about, a cardiac arrest, where an ambulance cannot get there before we can.
“We’re carrying the equipment and have the training in defibrillators. We will attend, gain entry and assist that individual until the specialist paramedics arrive.”
Mr Grieve said community work, such as the training of 561 people in life-saving skills at Brechin community campus, will complement the work of emergency services.
The incident referred to by Mr Grieve happened on June 16, when an elderly gentleman stopped breathing after going into cardiac arrest in High Street.
But he was brought back to life by two passers-by who happened to have the right skills to resuscitate him with a new public access defibrillator.
The quick-thinking off duty nurse administered mouth-to-mouth on him while Scott Robbie used the equipment on him.
The drama unfolded outside the Sun Studio in High Street, with the defibrillator kept yards away outside Thorntons.
Harry Simpson of Arbroath Rotary club, which has commissioned six of the units around Arbroath and Friockheim, said the emergency underlined the importance of having them accessible to the public.
