Keep space clear for ambulances
Sir – May we, through your letters page, notify those who will be visiting Caithness General Hospital in Wick that some remedial work is being carried out to the roof of the building? This has reduced the amount of car parking available by several spaces.
Since 2008, we have had an agreement with staff that they always use the car park from the dining room onwards, thus freeing up the spaces in front of the hospital for outpatients, visitors and those less able to walk.
However, we would like to ask your readers to assist us with a problem that is making it difficult for ambulances to transport patients to and from the hospital.
There are hatched yellow lines painted on the area covered by a canopy outside the main entrance to the hospital showing that this area needs to be kept clear as it is used by ambulances. There are also hatched markings on the access road that runs alongside this covered area.
Despite these road markings, people are parking cars on the hatched areas and on the adjacent cobbled area at the front of the hospital, where there is insufficient space to park a car and it is obvious that parking here will block the exit from the covered area.
Cars parked in this way are preventing ambulances from stopping outside the hospital or, if the exit is blocked while the ambulance staff are in the building, preventing the ambulance from leaving the hospital.
If ambulances become trapped in this way, they are not available to respond to emergency calls, which could affect you.
If the covered area is blocked, then ambulances have to park on the hatched area on the access road, which effectively blocks all entry to and exit from the car park.
On one recent occasion, an ambulance was trapped in the covered area for more than 10 minutes. There were also cars parked opposite the door on the yellow hatched area. During this time there were two emergency admissions to the hospital, which meant that a second ambulance had to park on the outside of the canopy on the hatched area of the access road.
We would ask people attending the hospital to park only in the parking spaces provided in the car park, to ensure that the hatched areas are kept clear at all times and not to park in a way that is going to obstruct the free flow of traffic in the canopied area or the access to the car park.
Pauline Craw,
Caithness locality general manager,
NHS Highland,
Caithness General Hospital,
Wick.
Graham Cormack,
Wick team leader,
Scottish Ambulance Service.