PAINFUL ACCIDENT

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 119, 23 May 1925, Page 7

PAINFUL ACCIDENT

MOTOR-CYCLE UPSET

LONG WAIT FOR AMBULANCE.

A young man named Hugh Douglas, 16 years of age, who is employed by E. Miles, a butcher, of Majoribauks street, met with" a painful accident shortly before 10 o'clock this morning. He was riding a motor bicycle, to which is attached a delivery side-car, in Majoribanks street, when one .of the wheels caught in a rut. The vehicle ran into a post and capsized, the driver sustaining a bad fracture of the leg. He was admitted to the Hospital at 10.30 a.m., and is reported to bo progressing as well as can be expected.. The patient lives at 87 Todman street. There was much comment among those in the vicinity at the time of the occurrence, on the delay in the arrival of the ambulance. Ifc was at least half an hour after the accident, according to bystanders, before the ambulance arrived. In the meantime, the unfortunate young man, who was lying on a rug on the pavement, was given first aid attention. "Again this, morning," remarked a Courtenay place business man to a "Post" reporter, "we have a repetition of the usual ambulance delay. The accident occurred before 10 o'clock, and the boy lay on the footpath with serious injuries till a quarter past 10 before the hospital ambulance arrived. It was cold and miserable,'and an asphalt footway is no place for a man with a fracture of the thigh to lie for twenty minutes to half an hour. It will no doubt be found, if inquiries are made, that the two ambulances at the Public Hospital were engaged, and that the least possible delay occurred, but that points to one thing only—as precisely similar delays have already pointed— that Wellington needs at least another ambulance.

"The late Mayor, Mr. E. A. Wright, in answer to a deputation ■which urged the purchase of a city ambulance, poohpoohed the whole idea of the Wellington City^ Council owning an ambulance and placing it at the disposal of such unfortunate citizens as, through no fault o! their own, might find themselves in sad_ need of it; the city should not enter into the field of such services while that work really remained the duty of the Hospital Board. The point is debatcable, but the fact is that, whether the council or the Hospital Board should provide the additional service, there have been quite sufficient cases of ambulance delays after city street accidents. '•It ■ is somebody's business to provide adequate ambulance services, and the sooner the two bodies decide upon a policy the better, as was suggested very clearly by the Medical Superintendent of the Hospital in his last report to the board. Upon one point Mr. Wright may be assured: that if he, ns a city councillor, had been present in Majoribanks street this morning during the time this unfortunate young man lay on the pavement and had questioned every adult standing about upon the question of the advisability of a city ambulance, the answer would have been : 'Get and bang the expense.' ",