Renee Khoury was in the kitchen when she heard a scream. She ran outside and found her 65-year-old mother, Rebecca, sprawled on the sidewalk with a compound fracture in her left leg. Renee called 911 then comforted her mom as best she could.

The Khourys live five blocks from Fire Station 62 in West Los Angeles’s Mar Vista neighborhood. They heard a siren right away, but something was wrong. It wasn’t moving. “It took 10 minutes,” says Renee’s husband, Jeff. “Becky was in pain. They could hear help but it couldn’t reach them.”