| Ambulance Update
 Penobscot Valley Hospital has continued to offer seamless ambulance service, despite losing one of its units in an accident December 28th. The ambulance was responding to a call saying there was a car off Interstate 95. “All the lights and sirens were operating,” says Emergency Department Director Jill Bouchard. The ambulance team was looking for the supposed car in the median when a pickup truck struck the back of the PVH’s Unit One. No one was injured, but the hospital’s ambulance was badly damaged.
Bouchard says the emergency call turned out to be a false report—one that had been made in more than one community that same night. “It’s important that people realize that when you make a false report, you put other people’s lives in jeopardy, because that unit could have been needed elsewhere to respond to a real emergency.”
PVH officials are reminding people to follow the Maine laws involving ambulances. “When an emergency vehicle is approaching with its lights and sirens on, all other vehicles are required to pull over as far as possible to the right, and then stop and wait for the ambulance to pass,” says PVH Spokesman Allison Bankston. “Also, drivers shouldn’t follow within 500 feet of fire apparatus or within 150 feet of any other emergency responder which is running its lights.”
In the hours immediately following the accident in December 2007, East Millinocket provided a backup vehicle to cover PVH’s service area, but it was not needed. The next day, Autotronics provided a loaner for the hospital. “It’s a 2006 Ford Motor Coach—the same model as the one involved in the accident.” says Bankston. “To our patients, the only difference has been that the vehicle now being used as Unit One isn’t painted to match our other ambulance.” Bankston says the hospital is researching its options for replacing the damaged vehicle. For more information on this and other PVH news stories,
contact Allison Bankston at 794-7124 or abankston@pvhme.org
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