Thieves prey on ambulance gear
- April
- 20
4:38 pm Live Window
A Howick ambulance has lost valuable equipment after a smash and grab raid in Manukau.
The incident happened while the ambulance was parked at Manukau ambulance station.
A front window was smashed and an electronic road mapping system used to help ambulances locate seriously ill and injured patients was taken.
The communications centre has a good range of systems for identifying where people are but the use of mapping systems has made it easier.
St John is a charitable organisation whose services are not fully government funded.
We are disappointed that someone has targeted our community organisation because everything we do, we do to help people. We save lives, says paramedic John Moselen.
The equipment, worth about $1000, was donated by a charity group.
Mr Moselen says GPS technology makes it a lot quicker to locate the patient, and the advantage of the particular piece of equipment the thieves took was that it was able to be very specific in identifying an address.
It was able to tell them how far down a street the location was, and whether it was on the left or the right.
Mr Moselen says it was particularly useful on a long road like Pakuranga Rd.
He says it%26rsquo;s frustrating to work without it and staff have to use map books which aren%26rsquo;t as efficient.
I urge anyone who has any information which might help us recover the equipment to please contact police, Mr Moselen says.
Earlier this month a backpack filled with medical supplies worth more than $3000 was stolen from an ambulance on the North Shore while a patient was being treated by paramedics.
St John is looking at ways in which it might be practical to secure equipment while at the same time being able to meet the needs of patients when an ambulance is in use, says regional operations manager Gary Salmon.
Thefts from an ambulance do happen periodically, but it hasn%26rsquo;t been a major problem in terms of either frequency or cost, he says.
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