By Don Lehman
The Post-Star
HADLEY, N.Y. — Four people were hospitalized following a head-on crash involving an ambulance on Route 9N on Monday morning, one of many crashes in which bad weather seems to have played a part.
Police said the ambulance was headed to Albany Medical Center with a patient when the collision with a pickup truck happened near the Antone Road intersection just after 10:30 a.m. The driver of the pickup truck was being blamed and was to receive at least one traffic ticket, according to State Police.
Warren County Emergency Services Coordinator Brian LaFlure said a Luzerne-Hadley Emergency Medical Services ambulance was involved. The front end of the ambulance was heavily damaged, and it was the squad’s only working ambulance as of Monday.
State Police said one person was taken to Albany Med and three to Saratoga Hospital, and none of the injuries was considered life-threatening.
State Police Sgt. Matt Murray said the emergency medical technician who was attending to the patient in the back of the ambulance was most seriously hurt, but his injuries did not appear life-threatening.
“He wasn’t secured in the back, so he was banged up,” Murray said.
The patient was in a gurney that was secured. Neither the driver of the ambulance nor the pickup truck driver was seriously hurt.
Names of the drivers involved were not immediately available. Murray said the pickup truck driver reported that he drifted into the oncoming lane and could not avoid the ambulance on the snowy road.
Ambulances from Jessup’s Landing and Moreau were called to the scene.
The ambulance suffered heavy front-end damage and will not be on the road again anytime soon. Lake Luzerne Supervisor Gene Merlino said the squad has two ambulances, but the other one was having mechanical problems and is off the road, too.
“We have no ambulances on the road right now,” he said Monday afternoon.
No one answered the phone at the squad’s headquarters later Monday. The region’s other squads will respond to calls through the mutual aid plan until Luzerne-Hadley gets an ambulance back on the road.
Snow squalls have made roads icy in many parts of the region. Wind damage was also reported around the region, with a barn roof blown off in White Creek and trees down in North Queensbury, Horicon and Fort Ann. National Grid reported at its peak mid-afternoon nearly 1,500 local customers without electricity, most of them in North Queensbury and Fort Ann on Lake George’s east shore. By 6 p.m., a couple dozen customers remained without electricity.
The National Weather Service reported wind gusts of 50 mph and over in Piseco and Bolton on Monday, with gusts of over 40 mph in other parts of the region.
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