On New Year’s Day, ambulance dispatcher Jeroen Puyman posted a cry from the heart about the violence against emergency workers on his Facebook page. “Where’s the fuss?”
After eighteen years as an ambulance driver, Puyman (45) recently started working in the control room, where he sends ambulance colleagues to reports. He has contact with them before, during and after a turnout: “You are on top of it. You get all the emotions and panic.”
Several hundred reports
Just like in the rest of the country, last New Year’s Eve was also turbulent in the North. The riot police were deployed in Tzummarum, Bedum and Marrum to ensure that emergency services could do their work. A day earlier, the riot police had to arrive in Ferwert, where the fire brigade was trying to extinguish a fire. The center in Drachten is in contact with emergency services in all three northern provinces.
Ambulance operator Puyman started his night shift around ten o’clock on New Year’s Eve. “This way, the colleague I relieved still had enough time to drive home quietly.” Puyman speaks of “a few hundred reports” that night. He cannot provide details for privacy reasons.
But the New Year’s Eve shift is a tough shift for both the operator and the ambulance staff, he knows. When he woke up on New Year’s Day and read the news, he was struck by how little was being done about the violence against first responders.
Angry and sad
He wrote: ‘I read how many colleagues were injured last night, deliberately pelted by heavy fireworks when they were on their way to save the burning barn, when they had to go with the ambulance to the victim on the street who is missing an eye due to fireworks and then being attacked by boys in balaclavas. And so I read one example after another.’
‘Then I think back to the round just now on Facebook and Instagram, and I don’t read the collective outrage about this anywhere. People who are normally very rightly angry and sad about wolves that have grabbed sheep, rightly angry and sad posting about people in poverty in the Netherlands, angry and sad posting about injustice… all silent… just oliebollen, apple turnovers and a few who are happy is that the fireworks have stopped so the dog can pee again.’
Puyman: “I’m normally not a fan of posting messages on Facebook. And if I do, it’s six friends and my mother who like it. But this message resonated.”
Intense outburst
The ambulance veteran’s cry from the heart was shared more than a thousand times on social media. He received massive support, including from healthcare colleagues. “See,” I thought. Good thing, too. Still a healthy dose of outrage. Because if we no longer have that outrage, we have a problem.”
As an ambulance dispatcher, you are also there to provide aftercare for colleagues who have just had a serious emergency. “Then I ask how they are doing and whether they can get out straight away or whether they need to recover for a while.”
Last New Year’s Eve, there were colleagues who had to recover before they could go out again, Puyman knows. “Then I can talk to them. Asking how they are doing, sharing my own experiences. Then it helps that I know what they are going through.”
And even though after eighteen years he is no longer in the ‘line of fire’ behind the ambulance wheel: “It still feels like you are very close.” Also because you have experienced it so many times yourself, you see the picture in front of you with every report.”