GUARANTEE DEMANDED.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 245, 16 October 1929, Page 3

GUARANTEE DEMANDED.

ambulance's trip into . COUNTRY. INJURED MAX WAITING. (By Telegraph.—Chen Correspondent.) CHRIST CHURCH, this day. Strons complaint of the tardiness of the ambulance in arriving at the scene of an accident near Amberley on Saturday evening were made by the medical man and others who were in attendance. The accident happened at 9.30 p.m., the ambulance was rung for before 10 o'clock j but did not arrive until alter 1 a.m., and i it was 2.40 a.m. before the injured man was admitted to Christc-hurch Hospital. A motorist, who arrived on the spot shortlv after the accident, stated that lie drove immediately to Amberley and rang for an ambulance. He was told, he "said, that the ambulance would be sent out immediately. He then went back to the scene of the accident and with the doctor tried to make the injured man comfortable. Ihe man was in srreat pain. The night was bitterly cold, and at intervals a light mist fell. There was no stretcher available, and the man was stretched out on the road with a motor car seat as a pillow. At 11.30 o'clock the ambulance had not arrived, and a further message was sent. They were then told that the ambulance I:ad not yet left Christchurch as the scene of. the accident was outside the mile radius. The doctor had to leave his patient and drive two miles into Amberley to give a guarantee that ho would pay for the ambulance, before it was sent out. "The ambulances are not intended lor country use." said Mr. C. J. Treleaveu, secretary of the St. John Ambulance Association, when questioned regarding the complaint. "Their upkeep is paid for by Christchurch and suburbs, and if the country districts want the use of : '.iem let them contribute to their upkeep. "We have only two ambulances, and they are rapidly becoming worn out," he said. "It is these long country runs that knock them about. The garage people are acting under.instructions in not sending it out without a guarantee, though it is not so much this we are worried about as the damage to the ambulance." The association had had to send the ambulance so many times into the country without being paid for it that they now insisted on the guarantee.