She was brought in to help reform the EMS wing of the D.C. Fire Department. Seven months later, Dr. Jullette Saussy is done. Not with the reform but with the department after she says her attempts, as medical director and assistant fire chief, to make even basic changes to the troubled agency have been met with resistance from the top down.
In a scathing resignation letter sent to Mayor Muriel Bowser, Dr. Saussy wrote "people are dying needlessly because we are moving too slow."
In the letter, Dr. Saussy cites one recent example of a man who died of a stab wound that she insists he could have survived if he hadn't waited 18 minutes for an ambulance.
Compared to departments with similar call volumes, the AP reported in 2013 that DCFD was trying to operate with half as many paramedics as those other departments around the country. Inadequate resources seem to have translated to slow response times. During the 2015 deadly smoke incident on a metro car at L'Enfant Plaza, it took five minutes for firefighters to be dispatched by a 911 call center, according to the AP.