Surreal news of the year
 

<a href="http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2005/032005/03242005/1710678/printer_friendly">Man charged with ambulance theft</a> (fredericksburg.com)

Summary:
<i>A homeless man was charged yesterday with stealing an ambulance that had just taken him to Mary Washington Hospital and crashing it minutes later.

Officers caught up with the man, who is accused of trying to run away from the accident scene on the U.S. 1 Bypass, and sent him back to the hospital in another ambulance, Fredericksburg police spokesman Jim Shelhorse said. </i>

This is SCREAMING for a video with Yakety Sax dubbed in.

What's Yakety Sax?

An instrumental musical piece that would work really well in this instance. You'd probably recognize it if you heard it.

Crazy guys and criminals stealing ambulances happens from time to time ... and the crew that it happens to get teased unmercifully over it. These guys can expect to find a variety of anti theft devices left in difficult places, that they won't have the keys to ... (imagine coming back to your car and finding a club locked in place that you don't have the key to, etc.).

Police cars get stolen the same way. The big difference, though, is that most ambulances don't have a shotgun in the passenger side footwell.

Our ambulances have an anti-steal switch that's really obscure. The first out truck is always running, second out gets plugged in. You can't just jump in the running truck and take off. People have tried. It is good to laugh at thier foolishness.

most?!

i think it would be useful to have ashotgun in an ambulance. for those patients you just don't think deserve to make it. :mg:

There are other, sneakier ways to kill someone in an ambulance. And you don't have as much cleanup.

Yakety sax, See any chase seen from Benny Hill. The music is yakkety sax. Its the phone ring for when the Frankenstein lookin bastard I hang with calls me. As for stealing ambulances, My cousin works as a paramedic and is head on his watch. He recently had a team call and inform them the ambulance had been involved in a traffic accident. the problem? None of the crew were in it. The Cabulance was left in neutral whil they were getting out and Columbia SC is very hilly. Nuff said

By "cabulance" do you mean "window licker van" (or just the wheelchair transport van)?

Cabulance is the reference to the fact that a fair bit of the teams time is spent not on emercency calls but on running medicaid/medicare patients back and forth from home to treatments. They become glorified cabbies. Even their dispatch refers to those as cabulance runs.

Damn, just damn...

That reminds me, I had a funny idea the other day. There are two companies in town that employ the "otherly-abled" and I was imagining a scene where the two companies square off against each other over a large job.

You could call it "Gimps of New York" or something like that.

Cripple fight!!!

And don't forget to bring your drool towel...

One of my friends here got out of that business because of that and drunks. He'd gotten tired of hauling DUI victim's (the ones not drunk) bodies out of the cars and fighting with the drunks to stay on the gurney.

Between that and the peanutbutterball monkeys he was about ready to start self-medicating.

I still don't really get it but I'll google out yakety sax music... (probably what I should have done in the first place anyway ^_^;;;)

In other news, a lorry wrecked an ambulance on its way back to the hospital in Taiwan. *Smacks head* Stupid red light dodgers...

That's one of the reasons that I'm so heavily involved in CISM, to try to keep the good people functional.

Of course, there isn't an EMT or paramedic over 35 out there without significant back problems. That's a whole other issue.

A lot of EMS and fire people do self medicate. The rates of alcoholism can get pretty scary. But damn, they know how to throw a party.

Bringing out the Dead is an excellent movie that really underlines all of this.

One of the cooler Chet Atkins songs is Yakety Axe. That guy ruled.