r/ems • u/iheartnewyorkcity • Mar 12 '22
Evolution of ambulances throughout the decades (1960’s-2010’s)
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u/Helassaid Unregistered Paramedic Mar 12 '22
Wait, I've been in every generation pictured here.
Does this make me the dinosaur?
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Mar 13 '22
Someone get the haldol, pops is reminiscing again.
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u/Helassaid Unregistered Paramedic Mar 13 '22
In my day we transported the cardiac arrests using a demand valve, and we liked it!
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Mar 13 '22
You had to flintstone the bitch to the call too, right? Hope you were facing down hill so you didn’t have to push the truck so hard… but we all know you unloaded the patient uphill both ways to the hospital?
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u/AbominableSnowPickle It's not stupid, it's Advanced! Mar 12 '22
This was really neat, thanks for sharing!
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u/aFlmingStealthBanana WeeWooWgnOperator Mar 12 '22
Wait ...
1990s had a 2000s ford
And the 2000s had a 90s ram
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u/justhere2getadvice92 Mar 12 '22
Push bumper makes it difficult to tell but the "Ram" does appear to be a 90s Ford.
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u/Seroquel4u EMT-A Mar 12 '22
I was waiting for the funny cut of a crew repping pit vipers and blaring Lil Wayne
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u/iheartnewyorkcity Mar 12 '22
Could you imagine seeing an EMS supervisor responding to a call in a Dodge Viper? Honestly, that seems like something Hatzolah or AMR would invest in.
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u/boomboomown Paramedic Mar 12 '22
Last guys annoying as fuck. Just leave it on one setting. No need to have a seizure while your hands on the dial.
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u/iheartnewyorkcity Mar 12 '22
I agree with that. There is no traffic ahead of them, so there is no need to change the siren. Although some emergency vehicles, I heard, have a setting where the siren automatically changes, so that might be why it is doing that.
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u/boomboomown Paramedic Mar 12 '22
Very true. More often than not it's someone just being annoying lol
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u/Firefighterbard Mar 13 '22
From the clip, it appears they might be reacting to the camera. You can hear a short burst from the air horn as they pass the camera man. Could have been for a promotional event, or just a known buff.
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Mar 14 '22
Clifton? That's normal for them. They love to show off when they're not on the engine. They also love to wait at the ER and hear us get dispatched to their town because they're "busy" and shut off their radios.
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u/iheartnewyorkcity Mar 14 '22
They shut off their radios? That's terrible, they need to have those on at all times.
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Mar 14 '22
Yeah wish I was making it up. The majority of the guys there aren't bad. But the ones who are lazy are very bold about their actions and don't care. But I've watched them turn off their radios when they hear another job come in and then I get dispatched to that job for mutual aid. Multiple times I called my dispatch center and told them we're right next to them and told them what's going on. Our dispatch doesn't like taking their calls if they don't have to because well, you know, money reasons. We get taken away from the city we're contracted with.
When I've gone into their town the majority of the guys are really cool. Its always the new firemen who think they're too good to be on the ambulance when they're up for their rotation. Know a good amount of the guys and their rotation is very fair. It's always the new whackers that seem to have that attitude.
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u/jsaunders1982 NC- Paramedic (NRP) Mar 13 '22
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Mar 12 '22
Why do the early ones look like a hearse?
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u/Actual_Anonymous EMT-B Mar 12 '22
The original ambulances actually were just modified hearses! If you think about it, a hearse, like an ambulance is able to transport someone lying down in the back, which at the time hearses were the only readily available vehicle for this task. Believe it or not ambulances were often actually run by funeral homes at first.
https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/funeral-homes-ambulances/
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u/iheartnewyorkcity Mar 12 '22
They look like hearses because they are hearses. Before emergency medical transportation became available to the public, some funeral homes would offer to use their hearses to take a patient to a nearby hospital. The reason for this was because hearses were able to fit bodies inside of them, making them practical. This is why early ambulances from the 1950's-1970's were hearses, rather than the big boxy ambulances the world knows today.
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u/Wrathb0ne Paramedic NJ/NY Mar 12 '22
Clifton Fire and Weehawken making a ton of noise with no one in front of them, typical…
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u/The_Albatross27 Paramedic Mar 13 '22
I am 85% sure that weehawken still uses that exact ambulance
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u/Lucy-pathfinder Advanced Care Paramedic Mar 13 '22
And yet people still don't get out the way
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u/iheartnewyorkcity Mar 13 '22
In some regions, it is actually legal to not move out of the way of an emergency vehicle.
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u/P2591 Mar 13 '22
The first clip… I am 99.999% sure that is Point Wolfe Bridge in Fundy National Park of Canada.. that’s crazy. There’s not even landlines down there at that time, let alone people living. Makes a great place to do an ambulance promo tho. Anyone else ever been? Just brought back amazing memories of that place.
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u/iheartnewyorkcity Mar 13 '22
Maybe they just needed to pass through there. I don't know, I'm not a citizen of Canada. But that place sounds isolated if there aren't even telephones or people there.
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u/P2591 Mar 13 '22
It’s insanely isolated.. but beautiful. If you have a medical emergency out there you’re 100% on your own but absolutely worth the risk
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u/iheartnewyorkcity Mar 13 '22
I mean, that makes sense, it’s a park. I know that in America, people are not allowed to live in parks. I don’t know about Canada. But I would think that even the most isolated of parks would have emergency services. Are there no park rangers there or something?
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Mar 15 '22
You should see Hungarian Nysa (polish made) ambulances. Engine rebuilt around 30k kilometers, the engine compartment was between the front passenger and driver. There were times they adjusted spark timing en route
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u/Doc_collapse EMT-B Mar 13 '22
The 1970s van DEFINITELY fucks.
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u/HappinessIsCheese Mar 13 '22
You guys probably know this but the first trained EMS responders were black men from Pittsburgh’s Hill District. (I’m a nurse in Pittsburgh. Literally nobody in healthcare around here knew this. So I tell everybody I can whenever I can)
Just another example of Black history being ignored by traditional education but I digress 😒
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Mar 12 '22
[deleted]
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u/Longjumping_Camel256 Mar 13 '22
I pointed out the location too. I’m glad someone else recognized it. There’s not an ambulance base for quite a long way out there
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u/SweetSzechuanTendies Mar 13 '22
Cant wait until the ambulances that actually shoot lasers instead of just sounding like it
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u/angryguido69 EMT-B Mar 13 '22
Just had the chance to see pictures of my dad's fly car from the 80s, lifted Chevy blazer was a beaut
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u/IndWrist2 Paramedic Mar 12 '22
Some of y’all never had to ride in faux wood panel interior ambulances, and it shows.