A fire alarm went off, the operator asked if we needed an ambulance and we said no but they showed up anyways asking if we needed medical assistance. What’s the point of asking?
In: Other
Ooh I actually know this one! So depending on your town /city /county /whatever, certain types of calls have a preset package of units they’ll send to a certain type of event. Like, for example, if you call in a fire they’ll send a predetermined number of engines, ladders, ambulances, and whoever else. They can then request more resources or recall the ones they don’t need. So in your situation, it’s either A) all fire alarm calls automatically get an ambulance, B) dispatch misheard and thought you said yes, or C) some sort of mixup in the message between 911 call receiving and fire dispatch. Also, you generally call 911 for either police, fire, or medical needs. Police and Fire are separate agencies. Some ambulances are a part of the fire department, sometimes they’re their own thing, sometimes they’re affiliated with a hospital system. There can be a lot of layers to sift through before units are dispatched, and while those agencies are adjacent they’re NOT the same thing. Lastly, there’s a human involved in most steps and sometimes people just click a wrong button or just straight up suck at their job.
TL;DR: predetermined response teams based on incident type, many moving parts in layered bureaucracy, some people are bad at their jobs
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