Oorah!!

I have been involved in a couple of emergency situations here and I must say people are 'hesitant' to help....Im not implying they are all Swiss, they could be any mix of nationalities! But I was rather shocked nonetheless. Maybe its a city thing.

However, I did learn this on my first aid course, which I think is very useful

144 Ambulance - think + (cross) for the 4's
117 Police - think 7 as a gun
118 Fire - you know what Im going to say, 8 as in hose pipe

Simple, but makes you remember!!

It is a city thing,too many people too many things to do,it happens all over the world.

Just a classic case of something the psychologists call 'group think' - the more people there are as witness to something, the less likely one person will step forward to do something about it...

Kind of like 'peer pressure'...no one is doing anything, so I won't do anything either....

Certainly the first step to rendering assistance is to stop and ensure there is no danger to yourself...but to actually do something against 'the group' is difficult...psychologically...

I am not a 'group think' person - I naturally stick my neck out, but I also find quite regularly that it gets chopped off by people who are much more conformist...

Seriously? were you sober??

When I tell this story to people, I am often surprised by the reactions I get as to how I handled it.

Perfectly normal people have told me that they would have let the dogs sort him out, or beat him up, or tried harder to get the police involved. Everyone seems angry I gave him a silly old Indiana Jones hat.

Over the years I have become pretty good at assessing threats, and he didn't strike me as being a serious one. He was just as shocked as I was to find someone in the house. Although he was a pretty big guy, I am a lot bigger, and along with my 2 dogs, the only way he could have been more surprised when he opened the door from my basement was if Chuck Norris had been standing there with a flaming chainsaw.

He smelled bad and was wearing filthy clothes. The items he was trying to take were some old clothes and a back pack. Nothing of real value. To get him away from my dogs, I put him in an arm bar and dragged him down the steps to the lower level of my house. I could feel that he was not strong and had very little muscle mass. I thought about whether he had a knife on him, so I watched his hands closely. I made him sit down on the ground while I called the police. I am sure he could tell that I couldn't speak French, but he was babbling on incessantly the whole time. My guess was that he was not all there.

When I called the police and found that they didn't speak English, I tried giving them my address, but they wanted to know why. I used words like Thief, Burglar, etc. in hopes that they may have heard these words somewhere in their training, but they seemed to have a mocking tone in their voice, and eventually hung up on me. My guest was watching and he could tell that I was getting nowhere. I remember him smiling, and not in a friendly way, and reaching for my cell phone. I was getting frustrated, but resisted the urge to knock the smile off of his face.

The longer he stayed, the less advantage I had in the situation. With no better solutions available, I decided to let him go. He kept reaching for the hat while I was on the phone, so I gave it to him as I pushed him out the door. For some reason I wasn't mad at him. I was mad at the police for not understanding me which is a bit irrational as this is their country. Try reporting a crime while speaking French in America and you are likely to get the same response that I received.

Your first post had me visualizing this incredible episode in my head, kind of like recalling a scene from a movie, so I'm glad you shared more of the details! It must have all seemed rather surreal. Any regrets about giving away your Indiana Jones hat? There's no way that my husband would have parted with his.

I only once wore that hat in public, and felt like an idiot the whole time. Some people can wear a hat like that and look cool. Sadly, I am not one of them. Hopefully my guest had better luck with it.

Just a side note: When you come across a situation like this, often people will defer to anyone else rather than take charge.

In this case, people had at least called an ambulance, but I've often found that the best thing to do is give bystanders a specific task. You actually have to make eye contact, and say, "You, call 144 and get an ambulance here." and "You, come here and help me turn him, gently."

Otherwise, people will just stand around and gawk.

Well, anyway, it's good to have the emergency numbers in your mobile, but it's also good to just take charge if people are just milling about. Give them tasks and they'll perform them well, but if you leave it up to them, they'll just assume it isn't nearly as serious as it may look.

(Oh, and yeah, definitely take first aid courses - without those, you should really not do any touching or moving of someone without specific instructions from someone who is trained.)

Hope this guy was okay in the long run, but your response is 100% normal, so don't be too hard on yourself.

Some years ago I worked for an IT company strong in CAD. We sold the Canton Polizei Zürich 4 workstations for disaster controlle. All the emergency services are linked into one system, and Ikons are superimposed on a map of the canton, showing the resources and the accident needs.