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?
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They will dispatch for a fire, but the fire brigade actually requests it in case of chances of smoke inhalation, etc.
People aren’t always fully aware of their predicament when they are hyped up on adrenaline – they may be coughing and not even realise it.
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
There are many factors.
1) do you know for sure you don’t need one? Is this a LEO call only, or something the fire crew can handle on the scene?
2) if you say “no” but they’re assessing it’s possible, they can send a basic crew and not a medic, since fire will likely (depending on area) have one on the rig themselves.
3) if they’ve received multiple calls about the same incident, they may be checking the temperature of multiple witnesses to assess other needs as well. Has an ambulance already been dispatched but now you’re saying YOU need one too? This requires some chess moves to accomplish.
Source: previous emt, current MICN at a level 1 trauma center.
I live in a medium-sized town, our town does the fire and EMS/ALS with our own ambulances.
The basic call is always a fire truck and an ambulance. The ambulance goes in case a firefighter is injured/or they’re needed after all, and the fire truck goes with the ambulance in case they need extra manpower to move/transport a patient. Granted, my town is 10 square miles (and kinda rectangular), so it’s not like any given call is all that far to go.
Ambulance respond to fires to support the fire fighters. The setup and run rehab which we are required to go to and get cleared after breathing through two tanks. The check BP and hydration and are present to deal with an injuries.
If you needed one too they will send more.
When you call 9-1-1, the person who initially answers the phone works for the Police. They’re the PSAP, the Primary Service Answering Point. The first question they always as is “Police, Fire, or Ambulance?”.
If you say “Police”, they just sort you out. If you say “Fire” however, you are routed to a Fire Dispatcher, and if you say “Ambulance” they send you to the medical dispatchers. The police dispatcher will stay on the line for both until they’re certain your issue is being handled, and that you don’t require officers to attend.
They ask if you need an Amblance so that you can be transferred to the dispatcher who can help someone over the phone in a medical emergency. Police dispatchers aren’t trained for that. It’s a very different process, but it’s only really necessary if you’re standing next to an injured person or if the EMTs are going to need baseline information before they arrive.
A lot of Fire calls will send an ambulance (or even have their own) as a precautionary measure, but the important bit is getting you to the right dispatcher immediately if somebody is in medical distress.
In your particular case, the ambulance wasn’t for you even if the crew asked if you were okay, they likely did that to be courteous/ make sure dispatch didn’t give bad info.
A LOT of fire departments have ambulances dispatched along with them in their way to fire calls for what’s called “medical standby” or “rehab”. Firefighting is *very* physically intense, so if your fire alarm turned into a true house fire, someone has to be there to check the medical status of the firefighters as well as treat them if they get hurt.
All of the answers go over the protocols, but to answer your question specifically: they ask so they know if there is (also) a medical emergency and how severe and urgent the emergency is. Protocol might already mean that the ambulance has been dispatched before you are even asked that question, but the answer is still important as it can change how the ambulance responds to the situation.
So if you say yes they can then ask e.g. how many people are injured, what kind of injuries, where these people are located, what kind of people are injured (children, elderly, etc.), with this information they can then decide whether they should be sending more ambulances, if the ambulances are going with lights and/or sirens on, in some countries there are even ambulances for specific emergencies that they could be sending, and by relaying this information to the paramedics they know what they can expect and can also start preparing for the situation.
I can’t imagine that it’s much more complicated than, money. Ambulance trips are crazy expensive, they have a product that they want to sell. You say you don’t want it at the time but then come anyway and recommend a trip to the hospital, “just to be safe”.
A non US tidbit:
Here there’s a 3 second “112 please hold” before each call. Which apparently filters out most prank calls. As the records show a lot of people just hang up hearing that.
Also the “Do you need an ambulance” question is a lot harder to work with for an aspiring Bart Simpson wanting to do some dumb prank call and clog up the lines.
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