AMBULANCE TRANSPORT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23218, 16 June 1937, Page 6

AMBULANCE TRANSPORT

BUSY PERIOD AT AUCKLAND ONE LONG TRIP UNDERTAKEN (Special to Daily Times) AUCKLAND, June 15. Within a period of 14 hours, 36 calls were answered to-day by the St. John ambulances stationed at Auckland. With seven vehicles in use, over 500 miles were covered between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., when transport officers earned their first respite of any length since the start of continual assignments in the morning, A number of trips were made to outlying centres, ambulances being despatched to Kaiwaka. Albany, Rcdvale, Taupaki. Langholm, and twice to Blockhouse Bay. In seven instances the patients were accident victims.

One of the longest trips undertaken in recent months by an ambulance in the Auckland province was made by a vehicle stationed at Whangarei Roused at 3.30 a.m.. Messrs R. Lacey and L. Philpott, two members of the Whangarei division, set out for Kaikohe to pick up a woman patient for transportation to Thames. The trip in all will involve travelling about 600 miles.

The patient became ill while spend ing a holiday at Kaikohe, and, anxious to return to her home at Thames, she commissioned the St. John ambulance as a means of transport Both the driver and the attendant volunteered to make the trip in an entirely honorary capacity. Leaving Kaikohe at 8 a.m. the ambulance arrived in Auckland at 6 o'clock to-night. After the patient, who was accompanied by a trained nurse and two relatives, had been fed. the vehicle left on the second stage of the journey to Thames.