Ambulance and fire engine could not arrive in time seems to be the common reason for failure to save life and properties. After some finger-pointing exercise, all seemed forgotten until the next ‘episode’ of ‘not arriving in-time’.

Why the failure to arrive in time? Is it the traffic jam or the driver not familiar with the caller’s area/region that caused the failure? If it is just mere human factor then a better training in getting familiar with the towns and cities would prevent the next failure.

But what if it is the ever-changing road name that causes the failure and delay in saving life and properties? Take the road in front of my house, it was called Ulu Old Oya Road since the beginning of the road and a few years ago it was renamed Old Oya Road and recently some smart person tried to change it to Jalan Oya Lama. Are they the same to drivers of fire engine and ambulance? No, if I am the driver I will tend to treat them as different road; worse still residents in the area still use the Old Oya Road or Ulu Old Oya Road as their address when calling fire engine or ambulance. But at one end of the road named Old Oya Road (from town) and at the other end of the road it was named Jalan Oya Lama (from hospital side). That is why when I called ambulance to bring my sick wife to hospital, the ambulance never come until she was dead in my arms.

Should we all learn from my case and stop playing with road name changing game for the sake of life and properties and not politics?