A family is reminding drivers to yield to emergency vehicles, after a car crashed into an ambulance, delaying their response to a women who believed she was having a heart attack.
“It was really bad,” said Jackie Figgins. Wednesday night, her sister Janie was in the driveway suffering from chest pains. The Rural/Metro ambulance was a block away, at the corner of Schaad Rd. and Oak Ridge Highway. Figgins said the lights and sirens were on, and that the ambulance stopped before entering the intersection.
“All the cars stopped except one white van, and it rammed the ambulance in the side,” said Figgins.
The driver of the van, a teenager, struck the ambulance. The EMTs inside were not seriously hurt, but Figgins and her sister had to wait for second ambulance to arrive.
“You know, all you want is the ambulance to get here,” said Victoria Norman, Janie’s daughter. “That’s all you want – and that 15 minutes is the longest of your life.”
Rural/Metro said their records show the second ambulance arrived 18 minutes after the 911 call was placed.
“Between the time they called the ambulance and when they actually left with her it was a good 40 minutes,” said Norman. “That’s a long time. Especially if somebody is in a life or death situation.”
Janie is now out of the hospital and recovering, but the family worries the delay could have changed that. So now – they ask drivers to prevent another issue like this, and yield to emergency vehicles.
“Please, be careful,” said Figgins. “Please pull over if you see an ambulance, fire truck – anything. Because that could be somebody’s life.”
10News is not identifying the teenage driver because he is a minor. Though the family did not respond to initial requests for comment, after this story aired on 10News, the family of the teenage driver called. His mother said her son was already in the intersection when the ambulance entered, and had nowhere else to go to avoid it. She also claims the ambulance activated their lights and sirens just before entering the intersection.
Rural/Metro Operations Manager Ken Lofeis was not able to comment on these claims, citing an open investigation by law enforcement.
The ambulance driver told police he had engaged his lights and sirens, and “came to a stop at the intersection and proceeded forward when he observed it to be clear,” according to the crash report.
Lofeis did say that cars failing to yield to ambulances is a chronic issue. Though few are involved in wrecks, he said ambulances are frequently slowed on their way to calls by drivers that don’t move out of the way.
“If they don’t yield, it could delay cars, and a patient could die,” Lofeis said.