Second thunderstorm asthma widow launches legal action against Ambulance Victoria
A mother of three has become the second widow to take Ambulance Victoria to court, after her husband died after waiting for help to arrive for more than 90 minutes during the freak storm which killed 10 people in 2016.
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A second thunderstorm asthma widow has launched legal action against Ambulance Victoria after her husband died after waiting more than half an hour for help to arrive.
Elsa Voong’s husband Hoi-Sam Lau, 49, collapsed while struggling to breathe during the November 2016 freak storm which killed 10 people.
Ms Voong says she has been left to single-handedly raise the couple’s three young children while grappling with the trauma of her husband’s sudden death.
She believes her husband may have been saved if emergency dispatchers accurately told her how long paramedics would take to arrive.
The Voong family lived just 15 minutes away from the nearest hospital, but instead the couple waited more than 30 minutes for an ambulance.
It comes as the Herald Sun revealed last month another woman – Ann Peiris – became the first person to take legal action against Ambulance Victoria and the state’s emergency call-taking service ESTA, claiming her husband’s death could have been avoided if she were given different advice from triple-0 operators.
Priyantha Peiris, 57, collapsed in the living room of his family’s Roxburgh Park home on November 21, 2016.
The grandfather waited almost half an hour for help to arrive, by which time it was too late.
He died in hospital eight days later.
Injury law specialist Sach Fernando, whose firm Maxiom Injury Lawyers is representing both women said the cases were similar in that they both included delays in the dispatch of ambulances – but the cause for delays were different.
On the evening of the storm, Mr Lau emerged from a room in his Mernda home struggling to breathe.
Ms Voong called triple-0 three times, during which her husband collapsed in front of her.
“During each call there were significant delays by the (ESTA) to take the calls which contributed to the delay in dispatch of an ambulance,” Mr Fernando told the Herald Sun.
“Further, we consider that ESTA missed opportunities to follow their own systems when dispatching ambulance resources to identify the risk to Mr Lau and escalate the call,” he said.
The father of four was transferred to the Austin Hospital’s intensive care unit where the family kept a 24-hour vigil by his bedside.
He passed away surrounded by his family eight days later.
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Seven men and three women, aged between 18 and 57, died during or soon after the spring evening storm, which was triggered by high pollen levels, strong winds and hot temperatures combined with a sudden cold front. It was the deadliest asthma thunderstorm in the world.
An inquest into the deaths of the 10 people heard calls to ESTA jumped 700 per cent, with requests for help coming in almost every 4.5 seconds.
Callers who dialled triple-0 during the storm were told an ambulance was on its way when that was not the case, the Coroners Court was told.