By ALEXANDER SIMONE

Staff writer

For the second time in two weeks, a Hillsboro ambulance crew got stuck on muddy roads while on a call.

The crew was transporting a patient home from Newton Medical Center at 12:53 a.m. Saturday when the vehicle became mired in mud on Falcon Rd. between 140th and 150th Rds.

“It appeared to be a good road, and they stayed on the blacktop as long as they could,” EMS director Travis Parmley said. “It just didn’t work out well.”

Fortunately, the driver was not the same as in last week’s incident, Parmley said.

“You can start getting a black cloud over you,” he said.

Firefighters were unable to pull the ambulance out with a Goessel fire truck, so assistance was requested from Marion County Road and Bridge Department and Auto House Towing and Recovery in Galva.

Road and Bridge was able to get the ambulance out before Auto House arrived.

The early-morning hours might have made it hard for the crew to see, Parmley said.

“Obviously, visibility is reduced,” he said. “Maybe they couldn’t see that the hill was coming up and they could have had a little more speed, but you don’t want to of too fast either. The time of day certainly played into it.

“My crew had been out there earlier and picked the patient up. There was some concern about the road, and whether they were going to make it.”

Similar situations might require greater caution in the future, with response from departments like Newton Fire Department, better suited for muddy roads, Parmley said.

“If it’s a transfer like that where we know it’s muddy then maybe I need to refuse it and have somebody with four-wheel drive take it,” he said.

The patient was transported to her home near 140th and Falcon Rds. without further incident, Parmley said.

“Other than hanging out in the back of an ambulance on a Friday night, and some people pay to do that,” he said.

While it was an inconvenience, the situation was easier to handle given the nature of the call, Parmley said.

“We weren’t trying to get to a patient, so that was good,” he said. “Had we been responding to a call, we would have had to start another truck that way and it obviously would have delayed care. We don’t want that.”