If there's a crisis in Roodepoort's Durban Deep, don't expect paramedics to turn up to help.
Paramedics are under siege, fearing whether a callout may be an ambush, following the weekend rape of an ambulance crew while tending to a child.
At Station 21, where the two paramedics are based, colleagues were still shaken from the incident.
The station now refuses to service Durban Deep, despite assurances from head office that paramedic services to the area will continue.
On Friday night, two women paramedics from Hodgson Street station in Roodepoort responded to a desperate call from a mother who said her two-year-old son had been burnt. The incident happened in Durban Deep, a mishmash of informal housing and low-cost flats, with near impassable roads.
The ambulance was driven to a pick-up point along Main Reef Road, where residents are often asked to bring patients.
The two paramedics were met by the woman, her injured toddler and two men. The boy needed to be hospitalised, so the mother went home to fetch a jersey for him.
"While they (paramedics) were busy with the child in the ambulance, three armed men appeared from the bushes, threatened the two men and told them to run away, otherwise they would shoot them.
"The two men ran down the road and the suspects took the women into the bushes," Senior Superintendent Noxolo Kweza said.
"They raped one woman and attempted to rape the other one," she added.
The two men, who were forced to flee, alerted police and accompanied them to the scene of the incident, helping them to search the bushes. Disturbed by the police presence, the three armed men fled while attempting to rape the second paramedic.
Both medical officers were receiving counselling and were unable to speak to police after their traumatic ordeal.
It's understood the child was not further injured in the attack and was taken to hospital.
"I'm getting out of here right now. It feels almost like it happened to me," said another female paramedic, who lives in Durban Deep, and was busy packing her belongings when The Star visited on Sunday.
"Everybody knows why we won't go in there, but the people in the community won't understand," said one Joburg Emergency Management Services (JEMS) officer.
All JEMS paramedics asked not to be identified as they had been prohibited from speaking to the media and feared losing their jobs.
Another paramedic said government ambulances bore the brunt of the attacks. "We get stones thrown at us and assaulted, particularly on a Friday and Saturday in the townships," the paramedic said.
He added that paramedics sometimes had to ask for police escorts when going into known danger areas, which sometimes delayed their response by up to an hour.
"You get held up at gunpoint and told that if you treat this patient, they'll shoot you. Sometimes you have people throwing bricks at you and sometimes have your equipment stolen," said Neels Loots of the private ambulance company ParamedicSA.
He and other paramedics admitted that some of their peers carried firearms, even though it was against the policy of their companies.
JEMS spokesperson Nana Radebe said: "This is an isolated incident. Safety measures will be put in place to ensure that something like this does not happen again."