Paramedics say the NHS is so overstretched they have repeatedly arrived to call-outs to find people have died while waiting for the ambulance.
One saddened emergency worker recalled three occasions in the past six months when she has had to say sorry to the families of those it has happened to.
The revelations came as ambulance staff on strike dropped their placards and rushed to save a patient in cardiac arrest.
The Mirror saw workers at a picket line in Anfield, Liverpool, spring into action.
Their colleagues said military personnel who had been drafted in to help cover gaps during the industrial action needed the assistance of the 999 experts.
Ambulance workers across the UK are on strike today to fight for fair pay and better patient safety.
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Angharad Williams, 31, a paramedic based in Bootle, Merseyside, said: “There have been several occasions where I’ve been out there and seen families whose loved ones have died waiting for an ambulance.
"It’s happened to me maybe three times in the last six months, so it’s really difficult to then have to apologise to people’s families because someone has died unnecessarily waiting due to delays.”
Emergency medical technician Scott Tyler, 29, said his aunt died a year ago while waiting for an ambulance.
Speaking from the picket line outside London Ambulance Service headquarters in Waterloo, he told the Mirror: “If they had got to her on target she would have got to hospital quicker.
"But she died before they arrived.”
He added: “It is not the service’s fault. It is due to the pressures holding us up at hospitals and not relieving crews so they can get to other calls.
“They are waiting six or eight hours sometimes. People are dying before we even get there.”
Furious strikers also criticised Rishi Sunak for jumping on a private jet to visit a healthcare centre in Leeds this week, while people are dying waiting for ambulances for hours.
Nicola Tipney, 38, a 999 dispatcher in Speke, Liverpool, said: “I think he should be utterly disgusted with himself – getting on his plane while people can’t even get in an ambulance. He’s in La La Land.”
Her colleague, Alicia O’Brien, 49, said: “It shows the level of somebody who is completely out of touch with what is going on.”
Alicia added: “How can he understand anything we’re taking about or what the country is asking for when he’s doing that?”
Paul Gamble, 45, a paramedic from Anfield, said: “The fact he can get on a private jet while people are dying in the back of ambulances is disgraceful.
“We’re sitting in ambulances for up to eight hours with patients that would normally be in resus, but they haven’t got the beds.
“We’re watching their demise in front of us.
“I’ve seen someone having a stroke in the back of the ambulance and we couldn’t do anything for them. It’s just not good enough.”
Staff say that in the control room, where 999 calls are assessed, staff are “crying at their desk”.
Some people dialling the emergency number can’t even get through due to the volume of calls.
Emergency medical technician James Watson, 27, said he hears colleagues “begging” for available crews to attend calls while they are stuck in hospital queues.
At one time, the main health complaint among ambulance workers was a bad back, but mental health problems have rocketed in recent years. A survey in 2019 showed almost half of them have suffered from depression. Thomas Roberts, 28, said staff in the capital are “burning out”.
The paramedic fears he could be forced to look for something else if pay and conditions do not improve.
He told the Mirror: “I love my job but at the rate it’s going at the moment... burnout is high among us.
“I have had my own mental health issues because we are so burnt out.
“And to top it all off I can’t afford to buy my own house because I don’t have enough money I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to have to get a second job part time.
"I don’t want to do that because I don’t want to be any more burnt out than I already am.”
Workers in the patient transport service in Liverpool said they are choosing between heating and eating because of “embarrassing” low pay.
In a message to the Prime Minister, Angela Gregory, 62, a patient transport service worker in the Toxteth area of the city, said: “What gets me mad about Rishi Sunak is that he’s hearing about sick people in corridors with their families and he still has that smile on his face.
“It doesn’t affect him or them in government, because they don’t have to do this – they have private care.”
