Stuck Redcar gate stopped ambulance getting to Peter Coates

A grandfather died after paramedics were unable to leave an ambulance station due to the gates being jammed shut during a power cut, an inquest has heard.

Peter Coates was left struggling to breathe after his oxygen machine stopped working when the electricity went off at his home in Dormanstown, Redcar, in March 2019.

An ambulance crew was immediately allocated from the Redcar station but was unable to leave, and by the time a different one arrived the 62-year-old was dead, his inquest heard.

A doctor told the hearing at Teesside Crown Court he could not say if the ambulance delay contributed to the death as Coates could have died within minutes of the power failure.

Coates, a former blast furnace worker at British Steel, had chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder which left him with severe breathing problems, Teesside and Hartlepool coroner Paul Appleton heard.

The power cut just before 04:00 GMT on 14 March caused his oxygen machine to fail and in a recording played in court, Coates told the call handler: “I’m breathing, but only just.

“You’d better get someone quick.”

After telling him the paramedics would be there “as quickly as they can”, an ambulance crew was allocated three minutes after his emergency call, with an estimated journey time from the Redcar station of less than two minutes.

However, the gates locked shut and they were unable to find a manual override to get the ambulance out, the inquest heard.

A different crew eventually got into the house 47 minutes after the first call, but Coates had already died, the coroner heard.

In a statement to the court, his daughter Kellie Coates said the family had not been told about the ambulance delay at the time.

“If the ambulance had got there in the two minutes they should have he would still be here today,” she said.

She said she was “haunted” by the thought of the “desperation” her father would have felt as he awaited the ambulance.

The inquest was told he had managed to put on a mask from a portable oxygen cylinder after the electric machine failed.

Dr Simon Quantrill, a specialist in respiratory disease, told the hearing the exertion of reaching for the portable device may have caused a further strain leading to a drop in his oxygen levels.

Asked by the coroner if Coates would still be alive had the ambulance not been delayed, Quantrill said: “I can’t say that because we do not know the time that he died.”

His view was that Coates would probably have died soon after making the call to the ambulance service, although Coates’ daughter told the hearing “on a good day” her father could survive for 15 to 20 minutes without the oxygen supply.

The inquest, which is expected to last three days, continues.