By Rebecca Baker and Shawn Cohen
The Journal News
Copyright 2007 The Journal News
NORTH CASTLE, N.Y. — Six adults with special needs, their caregiver and a driver were hurt yesterday morning when their ambulette flipped over and skidded upside down along Route 22.
A Citicare Ambulette, based in the Bronx, lost control near the Rye Lake Bridge and rolled over in the northbound lane about 9:16 a.m. The fiberglass top of the vehicle left a 120-foot-long skidmark on the road, officials said.
“It looked like they had a heck of a ride upside down,” Armonk Fire Chief Robert Lombardi said.
Crews from four ambulances and two fire departments responded, along with a slew of paramedics, who had a hard time communicating with the special-needs adults because of their physical or mental impairments.
“Some of them were not communicative at all, so we had to work off our observations of the patients and what the driver could tell us,” said North White Plains Fire Chief Matthew Manfredi, the incident commander who coordinated the rescue effort.
When Lombardi arrived, one victim was still upside down in the ambulette. Some of the others were in wheelchairs.
“It’s tough when they can’t communicate what the problem is,” Lombardi said. “They were very rigid, so it was hard to secure them to backboards. We had to transport a couple just sitting up, because that’s how they are in their wheelchairs.”
Two people in the ambulette were taken to White Plains Hospital Center, a hospital spokesman said.
One person was unconscious when brought to the hospital and initially was listed in critical condition, North Castle Police Chief Robert D’Angelo said. That person was listed in guarded condition later yesterday, he said.
“I think everybody is going to be OK as far as I understand,” D’Angelo said.
The others in the ambulette were taken to Westchester Medical Center, police said. A spokesman for the medical center did not return calls seeking information about the injured.
A woman who picked up the phone at Citicare yesterday acknowledged the crash but said managers were not available for comment.
D’Angelo said there was no early determination about the cause of the crash and that the accident investigation team’s report might not be finished until Monday.
The ambulette crash followed a fatal ambulance accident two weeks ago in which 25-year-old Matthew Lamb of Lake Carmel, who was an emergency medical technician and a Carmel volunteer firefighter, died. The ambulance driver reportedly fell asleep; Lamb was in the passenger seat. The driver survived.
An ambulette is a wheelchair-accessible, nonemergency vehicle used to transport disabled or convalescing people.
Staff writer Candice Ferrette contributed to this report.