Fire crews in parts of Haaglanden have not turned out for resuscitation calls since the start of July, and the decision is causing political and public unrest in several municipalities.
The safety region ended the task on 1 July, saying that resuscitation is not a legal core task for the fire service and that it puts a heavy mental strain on firefighters.
The stations that no longer respond are Scheveningen, Pijnacker-Nootdorp, Wassenaar and Maasdijk.
The fear behind the protests is that the change could cost lives.
Yet the study meant to support the decision in fact found that the fire service often reaches a patient sooner than an ambulance does.
Why the task started in the first place
A spokesperson for the safety region said the fire service began working as a first responder at a number of Haaglanden stations a few years ago because ambulances were not meeting the legally required response times in some areas.
In the years since, the region says, the ambulance service has invested in improving those times and now meets them.
What the research says
The decision rests in part on a study by the Netherlands Institute for Public Safety (NIPV), which contains plenty of figures that back stopping the task.
Of 93 calls examined in Pijnacker-Nootdorp where it was known which service arrived first, the police were there first 55 times, the fire service 22 times and the ambulance 16 times.
Not all of the numbers point the same way.
In Maasdijk the fire service was first at 23 of 25 resuscitation calls, and in the most recent cases it arrived a full six minutes before the first ambulance.
The calculations for Maasdijk also used driving data from neighbouring Midden-Delfland, which critics say gives a completely distorted picture of the situation in the Westland.
How often a civilian first responder got there sooner is not known, and the study does not show what ending the fire service turnout means for survival chances in the municipalities.
The NIPV also examined calls in The Hague, Wassenaar and Westland.
Its report gives no simple answer to the question of whether the fire service should keep the task, and the researchers list both advantages and drawbacks.
Reaction in the municipalities
Political parties filed written questions in every municipality involved.
TROTS Pijnacker-Nootdorp wanted to know why the task had been stopped and what that means for residents, and the town’s mayor, Björn Lugthart, told the AD that scrapping the fire service’s resuscitation role was a worrying development, since every second counts in a cardiac arrest.
Parties including Gemeentebelang Westland and TROTS Pijnacker-Nootdorp argue that the NIPV report draws no clear conclusion that would justify dropping the task.
The safety region says an ambulance now reaches 95 percent of emergency calls within a quarter of an hour, inside the legally set response times.
Whether anyone has been put at risk since the change took effect is not known to the safety region.
It says it has received no information from the regional ambulance service in recent months to suggest the decision has had consequences for resuscitation call-outs.
