Ambulance Station Officer To Retire This Month

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29820, 12 May 1962, Page 13

Ambulance Station Officer To Retire This Month

Driving ambulances “grows on you.” according to Mr W. O. Butler, station officer of the St. John Ambulance Association’s Peterborough street garage. Mr Butler will retire at the end of the month after 27 years on the ambulances, the last six yean in charge of them. Mr Butler has been driving ambulances from Peterborough street since 1933, his only intermission being during World War 11, when he drove for two years for the Air Force He will be succeeded as station officer by Mr W. R. Palmer, who has been driving from Peterborough street for 22 years ant has been Mr Butler's deputy since Mr Butler took charge in 1956. Things are not too easy, even now, for an ambulance driver, with broken hours and sudden calls, but driving was tougher still when Mr Butler took on the job. He was one of the first four drivers appointed when the St. John association built its garage and acquired its own ambulances instead of working through the old Rink Taxis. In 1933 the four drivers had to keep three ambulances going; nowadays, there are 12 drivers for seven ambulances. The Christchurch garage served the whole of Canterbury and the West Coast as well as frequently taking patients to Dunedin, whereas today the Dunedin patients are transferred to Dunedin ambulances at Timaru, while the country and West Coast districts are mostly served by their own ambulances. The long distances to be travelled meant that the drivers of pre-war days not uncommonly drove all day and all night and then had to keep going the next day as well. •Is Worth It” "Ambulance driving Is worth it, though, for the com. fort you know you are bringing to those who badly need it,” Mr Butler said. Although the distances travelled on Individual journeys in the 1930’s were on average much greater than now. the number of calls in the city has increased tremendously over recent years. This is partly a result of the increase of population, but is also related to a big rite in the number of motor accidents. Some days there are very few, or even none at ait but it is not unusual for ths ambulances to have to answer 20 motor-accident calls during 24 hours. Teen-age drivers were involved in many of these accldanta, Mr Butler Mid, especially during the night, when they were returning from parties. The kind of call which gives the ambulances most of their work these days is one which was almost unheard of

up to about 10 yean ago—the transport of patient* into hospital daily Monday to Friday for outpatient treatment. On toe other hand, some of the work which kept the ambulance* busy in pre-war time* account* for very few calls now. Maternity service is a case in point: formerly, when a man'* wife was due to have a baby he rang for the ambulance, but these day* he takes her into hospital in his own car or makes special arrangements with her doctor. Ambulances are now sent to maternity cases only on request from a doctor. Fewer Epidemics

Another service now little required is the transport of infectious-disease patients. At one time, a special ambulance

was reserved for collecting patients with infectious diseases and taking them to Burwood Hospital, then an isolation hospital. Scarlet fever, typhoid, diphtheria, encephalitis, poliomyelitis, and other diseases used to occure in epidemics, and tuberculosis was always rampant These days, the epidemics are few and less menacing and the doctors have found ways by which most patients may safely be treated at home. Mr Butler has been to some bad accidents in his time. The worst he Mid was certainly Ballantyne's fire, but the accident which gave most work to the ambulances was a collision between a bus and a train at Kaiapoi one morning, when 12 or 13 persons had to be carried to the Kaiapoi Hoopital and another six brought into Christchurch. The most rushed job was a call to Springfield to pick up a man whose leg had been amputated on the rail-

way. Mr Butler intends to live in Ills retirement in his preset home in Aranui. Before settling down, however, he and Mrs Butler will go to Britain.