• PHOTO: A four wheel drive ambulance is back on the wish list for Coonamble shire.
COONAMBLE Shire Council will again call for a four-wheel drive (4WD) ambulance to be based in the district following fresh calls from the community.
At a recent council meeting in Quambone, resident Robert Harris spoke about the poor condition of unsealed roads and said having a 4WD Ambulance was vitally important for people living in more isolated areas of the shire.
Council Mayor Tim Horan said he was aware of a number of recent incidents where a 4WD ambulance was needed.
“From my understanding, someone living out of town was having a heart attack and needed to be taken to hospital,” Cr Horan said.
“Because of where they were, a 4WD ambulance had to come from Walgett via Coonamble which put an extra hour on the trip. That’s a long time to wait for someone who’s having a heart attack.”
NSW Ambulance has indicated that it reviews where to deploy its 4WD-capable fleet across the state every five years, but there are only a finite number of vehicles available.
Calls for a locally-based 4WD ambulance are not new.
Shire Council records show that in March 2004 the Local Emergency Management Committee (LEMC), noted that the Ambulance station had lost its 4WD capability when the vehicle replaced by a Mercedes all-wheel-drive.
At the time the new ambulance was deemed “not adequate” and the LEMC wrote to the NSW Ambulance Operations Manager in Dubbo pointing out that the vast majority of roads in the shire – over 70 per cent – were unsealed and therefore often inaccessible by non-4WD vehicles.
The response from the Macquarie and Far West Sector Ambulance Service said the level of use of the area’s 4WD vehicle had not warranted a replacement.
Council continued to lobby for a 4WD vehicle in 2004 and the matter was raised again in 2005, 2008, 2009 and 2014, each linked to one or more incidents where patients weren’t able to be retrieved by local ambulance vehicles due to wet conditions.
Last week a NSW Ambulance spokesperson said there are currently almost 80 specialist 4WD vehicles in its fleet “strategically allocated in areas of greatest need across the state”.
“A range of factors goes into planning the most appropriate deployment of this crucial resource including historical demand and proximity to terrain where their use will be maximised,” the spokesperson said.
“This includes coastal areas, snowfields, mountainous terrain and dense bushland.”
The nearest 4WD vehicles to the Coonamble shire are in Coonabarabran and Walgett.
While they were not able to comment on how the incidents in Coonamble over the past two decades compared to needs in other areas, the spokesperson said the organisation would always look to identify different strategies to provide the most timely out-of-hospital emergency care to the community.
“In some instances, NSW Ambulance will also deploy aeromedical assets that can also quickly access remote and hard to reach areas of the state,” they said.
The Coonamble Times understands that there are on average a couple of incidents a month where a 4WD vehicle would be useful to local paramedics.
Council resolved to make a new application to NSW Ambulance and the state government to get Coonamble allocated its own 4WD ambulance.
The request comes at a time when NSW Ambulance are replacing its current fleet of 4WD vehicles with an upgraded Toyota L200 series Landcruiser vehicle.
The upgrade is scheduled to be completed at the end of the year, however the spokesperson said, at this stage, there were no plans to allocate additional vehicles in the region.