Train hits ambulance, killing 3 paramedics

[rainbow4321]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/20/train.crash.ap/index.html

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (AP) A train slammed into an ambulance that apparently tried to get out of its path, but stopped at a rail crossing, killing all three paramedics on board. The patient in the vehicle survived, officials said

Neal said the driver apparently decided he couldn't make it across the county road crossing in rural Fulton, backed up and came only a few feet from getting out of the train's path.

The ambulance was carrying a woman, Charlene Gayton, who had suffered a heart attack or a stroke. She was not hurt in the wreck, and remained in stable condition late Saturday.

Gayton, 66, was taken to a hospital by her family, who came in another vehicle and pulled her out of the ambulance. The accident happened about 50 yards from her mobile home.

[Massacure]

1. The patient survived but the paramedics died?

Wow, the irony.

[Skittles]

2. what an ordeal for that woman though

:o

[montana_hazeleyes]

3. Horrible story

But Charlene Gayton must have some will to live. What a nightmare right before the eyes of the family.

I especially hate to see stories of paramedics or firefighters hurt or killed. They just try to help.

[rainbow4321]

9. Train crash devastates ambulance service, spares stroke patient

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D88COQDO0.html


A horrific train crash with an ambulance may have killed the three paramedics inside, but they succeeded in saving their patient. Aeda Gayton couldn't believe the irony that her mother, moments after suffering a stroke, survived and the emergency workers didn't.

A quarter of the paramedics at Hope-based Pafford Ambulance are gone, officially because Ferrand failed to yield to the oncoming Union Pacific train. But Pafford paramedic Josie Carlton, who was the first on the scene after the crash, told KTHV-TV in Little Rock that she thinks there's another explanation for why the ambulance was caught on the tracks when the train approached the rural crossing.

It was Aeda Gayton who dragged her mother from the gnarled ambulance, still on her gurney, and took her the rest of the way to Christus-St. Michael's Hospital in Texarkana, Texas. Her fiance and sister helped, she said.

"I crawled through a broken window," Aeda Gayton said. "My mother was looking around. She was strapped down. We kicked and pried and pulled and kicked and pried until we got her out."

[bleedingheart]

4. so the woman had suffered a heart attack or stroke and then this happened?

whoa....suprised the shock of it didn't kill her too....
how sad...

[hector459]

5. One thing, the train was on its track. I don't understand the people who

think it makes sense to try to beat a train through an intersection. Sorry. I sympathsize with the loss of life but accidents at train crossings just make no sense to me.

[koopie57]

6. my husband is a locomotive engineer

and says that every car ever made comes with a device to prevent nearly every train-car accident. It is called the break pedal.

[soleft]

7. A smiliar accident happened to a close family friend

This happened back in 1975, but seeing the story brings it right back. She was a paramedic transporting a patient to the hospital, and the driver of the ambulance went through a red light - a dump truck approaching the intersection didn't stop and they collided. She was the only one killed in the accident, she was 42 years old. Same age I am now. She was really cool, I admired her a lot.

[Toucano]

8. What a terrible tragedy.

Peace to the families of the victims.