Thank YOU to all our VOlunteer Ambulance & Fire People
THis story is from last week, but it still hits home with me....
My Brother is an Ambulance Volunteer. He Loves volunteering, and puts his life into it. Just wnated to put a big thank you to all our volunteers, without you, we would be in A LOT of trouble. You have touched so many lives.
May the spirits of Heidi and Bill live on....
BY SAMUEL BRUCHEY, MITCHELL FREEDMAN AND JOSEPH MALLIA
STAFF WRITERS
May 3, 2005, 10:51 PM EDT
Two emergency responders rushing a man with apparent heart problems to a Riverhead hospital Tuesday were killed when the ambulance driver lost control in Aquebogue and slammed into a tree, town police said.
The accident took the lives of Heidi Behr, 23, a single mother who was a volunteer emergency medical technician, and Bill Stone, 30, of Rocky Point, who was engaged to be married and had been working for several months as a paid paramedic responder.
'It's horrible,' Behr's mother, June Behr, said Tuesday from her Riverhead home, where her daughter also lived.
'It's terrible. It's disheartening. It's very scary,' said David Brenner, chairman of the Suffolk Regional EMS Council. 'The reality is that it can happen to us. I'm sure there will be a massive turnout at the funerals.'
Two other people in the ambulance, the driver and patient, were taken to local hospitals, where they were in stable condition, officials said. They were not identified. Officials said the driver is 29, the patient 67.
Police said last night they were still investigating the accident, which occurred at 1:30 p.m. on County Road 25 near Church Lane, and released few details about what caused it. However, a Riverhead official and a Riverhead Town Volunteer Ambulance Corps member who asked not to be named said they had been told the ambulance had swerved to avoid a truck.
According to the official, the ambulance was traveling west with its sirens blaring behind the truck, which moved toward the right shoulder. The ambulance driver, apparently thinking the truck was moving out of the away, started to pass it on the left -- but the truck, rather than moving aside, was beginning a wide left turn, and the ambulance then had to swerve to avoid a collision.
The technicians had just responded to a home nearby where they had picked up the patient and were headed west on Route 25 to Central Suffolk Hospital.
The crash ripped off the passenger side of the white and blue-striped ambulance and scattered medical equipment, masks, tubing, boxes and metal shards across the roadway.
Afterward, police closed off a half-mile stretch of the county road, as investigators began combing through the wreckage. They remained at the scene into the early evening hours.
Both Behr and Stone were in the back of the ambulance caring for the patient when it struck the tree.
'It often happens that the patient comes out the best in this situation because they're always buckled in and you're in the back working with them, giving them oxygen,' Brenner said. 'You try to stay buckled in but sometimes you have to get out of your seat and that puts you in jeopardy.'
Two men working at a gas station to the west of the accident, Dan Vail and Joe Brynda, said they did not see it happen, although Vail said he heard the siren as the ambulance went east on its last run to respond to an emergency.
Brynda said that portion of the road was notoriously dangerous for motorists. 'It's just a bad hill. There's a curve in the road,' Brynda said.
Officials said Behr was pronounced dead at Central Suffolk Hospital and Stone at Stony Brook University Hospital, where he had been taken by helicopter.
Brenner said that EMS drivers go through driver safety courses and are instructed not to travel at high speeds. 'We're trying to help people in dire situations but studies show that speed rarely saves more than a few seconds.'
'When you have a person in the back of ambulance having a heart attack, or you're trying to prevent them from having a heart attack, the adrenaline flows, but in those situations you've got to drive with even more caution.'
My Brother is an Ambulance Volunteer. He Loves volunteering, and puts his life into it. Just wnated to put a big thank you to all our volunteers, without you, we would be in A LOT of trouble. You have touched so many lives.
May the spirits of Heidi and Bill live on....
BY SAMUEL BRUCHEY, MITCHELL FREEDMAN AND JOSEPH MALLIA
STAFF WRITERS
May 3, 2005, 10:51 PM EDT
Two emergency responders rushing a man with apparent heart problems to a Riverhead hospital Tuesday were killed when the ambulance driver lost control in Aquebogue and slammed into a tree, town police said.
The accident took the lives of Heidi Behr, 23, a single mother who was a volunteer emergency medical technician, and Bill Stone, 30, of Rocky Point, who was engaged to be married and had been working for several months as a paid paramedic responder.
'It's horrible,' Behr's mother, June Behr, said Tuesday from her Riverhead home, where her daughter also lived.
'It's terrible. It's disheartening. It's very scary,' said David Brenner, chairman of the Suffolk Regional EMS Council. 'The reality is that it can happen to us. I'm sure there will be a massive turnout at the funerals.'
Two other people in the ambulance, the driver and patient, were taken to local hospitals, where they were in stable condition, officials said. They were not identified. Officials said the driver is 29, the patient 67.
Police said last night they were still investigating the accident, which occurred at 1:30 p.m. on County Road 25 near Church Lane, and released few details about what caused it. However, a Riverhead official and a Riverhead Town Volunteer Ambulance Corps member who asked not to be named said they had been told the ambulance had swerved to avoid a truck.
According to the official, the ambulance was traveling west with its sirens blaring behind the truck, which moved toward the right shoulder. The ambulance driver, apparently thinking the truck was moving out of the away, started to pass it on the left -- but the truck, rather than moving aside, was beginning a wide left turn, and the ambulance then had to swerve to avoid a collision.
The technicians had just responded to a home nearby where they had picked up the patient and were headed west on Route 25 to Central Suffolk Hospital.
The crash ripped off the passenger side of the white and blue-striped ambulance and scattered medical equipment, masks, tubing, boxes and metal shards across the roadway.
Afterward, police closed off a half-mile stretch of the county road, as investigators began combing through the wreckage. They remained at the scene into the early evening hours.
Both Behr and Stone were in the back of the ambulance caring for the patient when it struck the tree.
'It often happens that the patient comes out the best in this situation because they're always buckled in and you're in the back working with them, giving them oxygen,' Brenner said. 'You try to stay buckled in but sometimes you have to get out of your seat and that puts you in jeopardy.'
Two men working at a gas station to the west of the accident, Dan Vail and Joe Brynda, said they did not see it happen, although Vail said he heard the siren as the ambulance went east on its last run to respond to an emergency.
Brynda said that portion of the road was notoriously dangerous for motorists. 'It's just a bad hill. There's a curve in the road,' Brynda said.
Officials said Behr was pronounced dead at Central Suffolk Hospital and Stone at Stony Brook University Hospital, where he had been taken by helicopter.
Brenner said that EMS drivers go through driver safety courses and are instructed not to travel at high speeds. 'We're trying to help people in dire situations but studies show that speed rarely saves more than a few seconds.'
'When you have a person in the back of ambulance having a heart attack, or you're trying to prevent them from having a heart attack, the adrenaline flows, but in those situations you've got to drive with even more caution.'
