In an October letter to Secretary of the Department of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of Dallas asked for the government to urge companies that manufacture ambulances to prioritize that production.
“These delays jeopardize public safety in Texas and across the United States,” mayor Eric Johnson said in the letter, on which he copied 16 other Texas cities.
August floods swept more than four dozen of the city’s ambulances away, he said.
It now takes at least 2 years to receive an ambulance after ordering one, Mr. Johnson said, whereas that wait time was between 90 and 120 days before the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Austin, older ambulances are being used to offset the shortage and maintain response times.
“It’s really a national and even a global issue with delays from manufacturers such as for GM, Ram, Dodge,” Captain Darren Noak, Austin-Travis County emergency medical services’ public information officer, told KXAN.
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