This article is from page 4 of the 2008-08-19 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
TWO of the four people injured last Friday night in a road traffic collision near Crusheen had to wait for over an hour in the rain for ambulances to reach the scene.
The two car head-on crash occurred shortly before 6 o’clock at Crusheen on the main N18 Ennis to Galway road. Two units of the fire brigade from Ennis and four ambulances from Ennis and Ennistymon attend- ed the incident, however, it took an hour before two of the ambulances reached the incident.
The injured, three women and a man, were taken to Ennis General
Hospital for treatment. The road was blocked for over an hour while traf- fic was backed up for several kilome- tres in each direction. None of the patients sustained seriously injured, however, some were trapped in the vehicles for a short time.
While the first ambulance arrived at the scene within minutes, it took more than half an hour for the sec- ond ambulance to arrive. This meant that the first ambulance on scene could not leave with its patients until back-up arrived. At one point, para- medics were treating one patient on a stretcher and another on the floor of the only ambulance at the crash.
It took a further 30 minutes before
another two ambulances reached the incident, over an hour after the crash was first reported. It 1s understood that one of the Ennis ambulances was returning from a call in Limerick at the time of the incident leaving just one ambulance to cover emergencies in Ennis.
In recent years, a new European Standard of ambulance has been introduced which means that vehi- cles can only accommodate a single Stretcher instead of the two which could be carried in older vehicles. Ambulance personnel in Ennis have long complained about the lack of re- sources within the service.
Last Wednesday night, an ambu-
lance from Kilrush had to travel 80 kilometres from its base to a medi- cal emergency in Newquay in north Clare because the Ennistymon am- bulance was also tied up.
Also last Wednesday, a single am- bulance from Ennis had to make two trips to the same traffic accident to take patients to hospital because of a lack of vehicles. Three cars were involved in the pile up at the New Road/Clonroad roundabout. The ambulance had to take one patient to Ennis General Hospital before re- turning to the scene for the second casualty.
A response was awaited from the HSE last night.