AS THE BLIZZARD OF ’09 BLEW ACROSS Massachusetts Sunday, a man in West Barnstable collapsed outside his house, generating a call for emergency medical assistance. The West Barnstable FD ambulance responded and had no difficulty getting on the road and out of town, but as it neared the man’s home the ambulance had to travel on a road that hadn’t yet been plowed. A couple of blocks away from the address, the ambulance got stuck in a pocket of snow that was blocking the road.
As the medics grabbed their aid bags and equipment and started walking the rest of the way to the victim’s home, the “all hands” call went out to the neighborhood. Instead of “peasants with pitchforks,” a small army of “neighbors with snow shovels” turned out, backed up with the “cavalry” of a half-dozen snow blowers parading down the road to the beleaguered ambulance.
WCVB-TV
“It was kind of neat seeing all the plows going down the street in unison,” said Tom Flaherty, who assisted in the rescue effort.
While the army of irregulars was digging out the ambulance and the snow-blowers were clearing the road, one neighbor who has a 4-wheel-drive vehicle drove up to the working medics and the patient was transported back to the ambulance.
WCVB-TV Ch. 5 Boston has this heart-warming report from West Barnstable:
The man was treated at the hospital and is expected to recover fully. “It was a whole community out there helping us do our job,” said one member of the West Barnstable Fire Department.
