Thompson discovered that recordkeeping under Few was so poor that the true extent of the paramedic and EMT vacancy issue could not be determined. (An internal DCFEMS study showed the agency had only 174 of the 335 emergency medical workers it needed to operate its 36 ambulances.) The situation was worsening because improvements to fire safety throughout the years meant that the city had fewer than 100 fire alarms in a month but 8,000 to 9,000 calls for medical assistance.Fahrenthold, David A. "Ambulance Service Short of Personnel". The Washington Post. September 16, 2002. A three-month study by the D.C. Office of the Inspector General, released in October 2002, found that the department had no accurate way of measuring how long it took for an ambulance to reach the scene once a call for aid was received.Cella, Matthew. "Report Hits EMS on Service, Staffing". The Washington Times. October 18, 2002. It could and did measure the time it took for ambulance crews to leave the stationhouse once they received an alert, however. This "turn-out time" was double the national average (two minutes rather than one).Fahrenthold, David A. "D.C. Finds Big Delays in EMT Response". The Washington Post. October 18, 2002. In two-thirds of the days covered by the study, up to a fifth of all ambulances were out of service due to staffing shortages. All 14 of the ambulances were fully staffed on just four days. The inspector general blamed part of the problem on employees who "are lazy or do not care", while the paramedic and EMT union attributed the slow turn-out time to over-worked and under-staffed employees.
