Emergency Services

When there is a fire, crime or a traffic accident, the emergency services are guaranteed to be late.

At a recent incident in Blok M, the Gold Market (which was lucky enough to have a fire station about 1 kilometer away) mysteriously caught fire and it took the fire fighters about 15 minutes to get there. Even better it took another 30 minutes to find a water source to power the pumps up and start fighting the fire. Total time from ringing to drenching about 45 minutes, needless to say another huge (and possibly planned) insurance claim was lodged. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth for the poor shopkeepers, much gleeful rubbing of hands and dreams of fat wallets from the landowners. (The area had been earmarked for redevelopment; however, there were issues in getting the shop owners to vacate their premises).

With the hard shoulder being used as another lane on the toll roads, the volume of traffic within the inner roads and a lack of ambulances, (research is underway to come up with an actual figure) the chances of getting the Jakartan St Johns Amberlance service zipping through the metropolis are almost zero.

Let’s see Jakarta has 12 million people resident with another 6 million within the suburbs. Imagine its heart attack time; you may as well kiss your ass goodbye!

However, another twist to this situation is the fact that they don’t have hearses, Ambulances perform this function. So approximately half of the emergency vehicles are being used for “transportation of stiffs” during daylight hours.

Every cloud has a silver lining. You’ve had your heart attack, Ambulance didn’t get to you until rigor mortis had firmly arrived, you have shifted off this mortal coil on the way to the pearly gates and finally, you get to travel through the city faster than a speeding bullet.

How is this you may well ask? Easy! Motor cycles with yellow flags do the trick! On the way to the cemetery, (and there are loads of them hidden away all over the shop) your bereaved family and mourners get big sticks with yellow flags attached to their motor cycles. At every major junction they dismount and control the traffic so that you, during the last ride of your existence on this planet do not have the indignity of being stuck in a traffic jam or waiting on the lights to change. Ironic, the dead travel quicker than the living. Unbelievably, everyone gets out of the way, the sea of traffic parts and wham bang thank you ma’am you’ve been planted before you know it.

The police of course are seemingly in control of the traffic problem and they let you know all about it. If the traffic is especially slow, if you’re getting punted from pillar to post through one way systems and you cannot see the car in front through the exhaust haze there is only one answer. The police are on traffic duty and trying to control the flow.

Almost every driver here has an innate feeling for how to avoid major snarl ups, road rage does not apparently exist and even though the way ahead is completely blocked by the omnipresent hordes of motorcycles, traffic normally flows relatively smoothly.

Then, boom, everything is dead stop and still, sure enough, each junction is being controlled by a policeman and you can forget about getting where you want to be on time, unless of course, you have all your mates on motor bikes waving yellow flags all over the shop.