Ambulance

Rescue workers survey the scene of an accident yesterday in West Philadelphia in which a Fire Department ambulance and a car collided. A two- week-old boy was hospitalized and four adults suffered minor injuries in the 4:15 p.m crash. The ambulance was heading south on 54th Street when it hit a Cadillac heading west on Spruce Street, which then hit another car, police said. Among the injured were a woman being taken in the ambulance to a hospital and a relative riding with her.

The generosity of Woodbury Heights residents is being credited with saving the borough $55,000 in tax dollars. Mayor Donald W. Steward, who is also chief of the Woodbury Heights Volunteer Fire Department, explained that residents' contributions to the Woodbury Heights fire association were recently used to buy a used ambulance. Steward said that because the association needed to replace its 1974 ambulance, the borough was facing an outlay of about $55,000. But when the National Park Community Ambulance Association recently put its 1981 ambulance up for sale for $7,000, the Woodbury Heights fire association, which had the cash available from a recent fund-raising event, snapped it up. Steward said that because there was no money in the 1987 borough budget for an ambulance, Borough Council would not have been able to act as quickly to buy the National Park ambulance.

Anthony Polito hopes that the Good Fellowship Ambulance Club of West Chester will obtain insurance for next year. The question is: At what cost? Polito, club president, was notified recently that Nationwide Insurance of Harrisburg would not renew insurance on the club's five ambulances because there were four accidents in 1986. He said that there had been no accidents in 1983, one in 1984 and 1985, and none in 1987. "We expected a rate rise because we had a bad year last year," Polito said.

The Cheltenham Township Board of Commissioners will appeal a recent order by the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) that allows a local businessman to operate his ambulance and paratransit service in violation of the township zoning ordinance. The commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday night to accept a recommendation by the board's Building and Zoning Committee that township solicitor Gilbert P. High Jr. file an appeal of the PUC order in Commonwealth Court. The appeal is to a petition filed by Jeff Morgan, owner of Medi-Call Paratransit and Ambulance services and Keystone Transportation.

A car rammed into an ambulance on an emergency call at an intersection just blocks north of City Hall this morning, flipping the Fire Department vehicle on its side and injuring two medics. The crash also closed North Broad Street between Spring Garden and Vine Streets during the morning rush hour. Batallion Chief Eric Fleming said the injuries to the medics were not life threatening. The ambulance, Medic Unit 50, was northbound on Broad Street with its lights and sirens on when it was hit by a silver Chrysler sedan that was westbound on Callowhill Street about 7 a.m. The ambulance flipped onto the driver's side of the vehicle and the sedan, its front end smashed in, ended up facing toward the northeast corner of Broad and Callowhill.

Maryanne Cannon and Beth Miller were still reeling from an accident in which their Pontiac Grand Ams collided in Northampton Township. Then things got worse. The ambulance transporting them to Warminster General Hospital was hit by car about a half-mile away from the first accident. Police gave this account: Cannon, 54, of the first block of Amsterdam Avenue, Holland, and Miller, 25, of the first block of Kingsclere Road, Southampton, collided at New and Holland roads at about 7:45 a.m. May 10. A Tri-Hampton Rescue Squad ambulance driven by Stanley J. Niedzwiki, 31, of the first block of Granit Road, Levittown, was taking Cannon and Miller to the hospital when it was struck by a car at Hatboro and Bristol Roads about 8:23 a.m. Christine Myers, 33, of the 1200 block of Spring Street, Warminster, told police she was heading east on Bristol Road approaching Hatboro Road when she heard sirens but did not see an ambulance.

The Township Council voted last night to seize the Emergency Squad's $110,000 ambulance and revoke the squad's right to operate amid allegations of financial misconduct and abuse of power. By a vote of 5-0, the council adopted an ordinance preventing the Emergency Squad from working in the township, a move that may land the heated squabble in the courts. Following last night's action, members of West Deptford Emergency Medical Service - now the town's working ambulance squad - took possession of the West Deptford Emergency Squad's ambulance.

The Good Fellowship Ambulance Club will get only half the money it wanted from West Chester. The rest will go to the borough's Fire Department. After a tongue-lashing issued to both emergency-service groups, the West Chester Borough Council voted, 5-1, last week to give the ambulance club's relief association only $8,750 of the $70,000 in fire insurance money the borough received from the state. Good Fellowship had requested twice that amount, and, according to John Gavin, president of the club's relief association, his group was treated unfairly by the council.

The way Joe Anderson sees it, no one should risk having a heart attack or a car accident in Cherry Hill between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. During those hours, he says, there's a chance that an ambulance will arrive too late to do any good. Anderson is a volunteer and captain of Squad 13-1, the group of emergency medical technicians, or EMTs, who cover the busy west side of Cherry Hill. On countless nights, he has waited - in the station and at home by his pager - for volunteers to respond to the emergency calls that come over the county dispatch radio.

Nicholas Walker has a lot to smile about these days. He is praised as the most active member on Bryn Athyn's ambulance unit and has received the squad's Emergency Medical Service Person of the Year award twice. He is 71. Walker is the ambulance driver or the corpsman, assisting in the patient's care and directing his crew in the care. What separates him from the other 70 members in the squad is his record. He has gone on 1,500 calls and has driven 6,000 miles since he started as a volunteer in 1983.

A PARAMEDIC sparked a panic Tuesday morning when he reported that his co-worker kidnapped him as the pair drove an ambulance through several northwest Philadelphia neighborhoods. Police put out a bulletin on the ambulance, and Cheltenham Township police spotted it and stopped it at 2nd Street and Cheltenham Avenue. Turns out, the driver had just gotten fired, announced that he didn't have a way home and so would drive the ambulance home, taking his apparently unwilling passenger, another paramedic, along in order to return the ambulance, said Trooper Danea Durham, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania State Police, which assisted.

LIVORNO PLAYERS and fans gathered Sunday at the Italian soccer team's stadium to pay their respects, a day after midfielder Piermario Morosini , 25, collapsed and died after suffering cardiac arrest during a Serie B match at Pescara. A defibrillator was used on the player, who also had his heart massaged, before an ambulance arrived on the field to take him to a hospital where doctors tried unsuccessfully to revive him for about 90 minutes. An autopsy will be carried out Monday, and may reveal whether a delay in the ambulance getting to Morosini could have contributed to his death.

A car rammed into an ambulance on an emergency call at an intersection just blocks north of City Hall this morning, flipping the Fire Department vehicle on its side and injuring two medics. The crash also closed North Broad Street between Spring Garden and Vine Streets during the morning rush hour. Batallion Chief Eric Fleming said the injuries to the medics were not life threatening. The ambulance, Medic Unit 50, was northbound on Broad Street with its lights and sirens on when it was hit by a silver Chrysler sedan that was westbound on Callowhill Street about 7 a.m. The ambulance flipped onto the driver's side of the vehicle and the sedan, its front end smashed in, ended up facing toward the northeast corner of Broad and Callowhill.

The owner of a Chester County ambulance company was sentenced to 80 months in federal prison for trading child pornography on the Internet, authorities said Thursday. Jason Haldeman, 38, the owner of Stat Care Ambulance Service Inc. in West Grove, provided 74 files depicting child porn to an undercover agent in Delaware, authorities said. When federal agents raided his home and office on Jan. 20, 2011, they found 16,000 child-pornography files, including 3,000 movies. Haldeman, of Landenberg, was part of a trading network with 150 members.

An ambulance transporting an 80-year-old patient overturned in a three-vehicle crash in the city's Logan section Sunday that sent five people to hospitals, Philadelphia police said. The victims were taken to Temple University Hospital and Einstein Medical Center. Their injuries were described as not life-threatening. The Ford ambulance had its lights and sirens on as it headed east on West Olney Avenue near La Salle University. As the ambulance approached a red traffic light around 9:34 a.m., it hit a Mercury Sable, which had the green light and was traveling north on 20th Street, police said.

An ambulance transporting an 80-year-old patient overturned in a three-vehicle crash Sunday that sent five people to hospitals, Philadelphia police said. The victims were taken to Temple University Hospital and Einstein Medical Center. Their injuries were not described as life threatening. The Ford ambulance had its lights and sirens on as it headed east on West Olney Avenue, near La Salle University. As the ambulance approached a red traffic light around 9:34 a.m., it hit a Mercury Sable, which had the green light and was traveling north on 20th Street, police said.

A Bucks County man pleaded guilty today in federal district court to charges that an ambulance company he helped run was involved in a health care fraud scheme. Ivan Tkach, 30, of Newtown, admitted giving false statements relating to health care and illegal remunerations for health care services, authorities said. He ran the daily operations at Advantage Ambulance Company, which was based in Philadelphia's Olney neighborhood. The ambulance service began in 2003 and was sold in 2009, prosecutors said.

A Professional and Personal Memoir By Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney Threshold Editions. 565 pp. $35 Reviewed by Frank Wilson Wikipedia may not be the last word when it comes to finding information, but it does make a useful distinction regarding memoirs, namely, that they "are structured differently from formal autobiographies . . . focusing on the development of [the author's] personality. " Whether former Vice President Dick Cheney thought about this or not, the fact remains that he has called his book a memoir and as such it ought to be judged.

Charles Torpey, head coach of La Salle University's men's and women's cross country and track and field programs since 1994, died of an apparent heart attack on Friday. He was 58. Torpey had just finished supervising a workout with Sean Quigley, a former La Salle All-American who is training for the 2012 Olympics, at Valley Green. After the workout, Quigley went for a brief cooldown run, and when he returned, he saw medics putting a person into an ambulance. "I came back and saw an ambulance and cop cars, and I saw they were doing CPR on somebody in the ambulance," Quigley said.