Incident times: between 8 pm on the 24th and 6 am on the 25th of December 2012
Despite a decreased in the number of accidents attended to overnight, out of approximately 26 accidents that ER24 paramedics were called out to between 20:00 last night and 06:00 this morning, six of them resulted in fatalities.
At around 8 pm last night, paramedics were called out to an accident in the pouring rain where a collision had taken placed between two vehicles on the R73 between Welkom and Virginia in the Free State, approximately 10 kilometers outside of Welkom. Paramedics explained that when they got to the scene of the incident, both vehicles were in pieces and strewn across the road, and their focus was getting the patients assessed as quickly as they could and out of the rain to treat them inside the back of the ambulance en route to hospital.
What appears to have happened was that one vehicle was stationary at the side of the road and the other drove into the back of it. It is not entirely clear as to how many people had been in each of the cars, but three adults suffered critical injuries and another three suffered moderate injuries. They were either pulled from the vehicles using spinal stabilising equipment, or they had been found outside the vehicle having been flung out during the impact.
Sadly, two people had not survived their injuries that they had sustained as a result of the collision and paramedics declared the two patients dead on scene.
Pietermaritzburg paramedics were called out to the scene of an accident that had taken place on the N3 near the Camperdown off ramp. A vehicle travelling in the direction of Pietermaritzburg had flipped over and then rolled up the embankment.
Upon arrival, paramedics found that it had been only the Chevrolet Cruze that had been involved in the accident, and it had been a young mother, father and baby that had been travelling in the vehicle at the time. It appears that the 3 week old baby boy had been ejected from the vehicle as it rolled, and he was found lying outside the vehicle.
The baby boy was badly injured, and paramedics tried to revive him to no avail. The baby was declared dead on scene. The mother and father were thoroughly checked by paramedics and found to have sustained only minor physical injuries, and despite them urging the couple to go to hospital, both of them refused and remained on scene.
A pedestrian had been knocked down on Andries Pretorius Street in Navalsig in Bloemfontein and paramedics were called to the scene shortly before 00:30.
Upon arrival, they found that a man in his 30’s was lying in the road having suffered fatal injuries. The road is poorly lit, and a bakkie driving along the road collided into the man. Upon assessment by paramedics, it was found that he had sustained two broken arms and a severe head injury that had resulted in his death.
The bakkie had slight damage to the bumper, and this led paramedics to believed that the man had possibly been knocked down by another vehicle initially and then the bakkie had been the second vehicle to collide into him. No one in the bakkie had been injured, and the pedestrian was declared dead.
In Parow, on Delarey street, two vehicles had collided just before 2am, which resulted in two people losing their lives and three other sustaining injury.
The details surrounding the incident are not clear, as the incident is believed to have involved a state vehicle and police are investigating. The two occupants of the one vehicle were declared dead on scene, while the other three patients were taken to Tygerberg Hospital by ambulance for further medical care.
Just after 02:30, our Eastern Free State crews were called to the scene of a head on collision that had taken place on the N5 outside of Paul Roux.
When they got to the scene they found that a Citi Golf and a Nissan 1400 bakkie had been involved in the collision where they had collided head on. Sadly, all three of the patients on scene had lost their lives in the accident; the single occupants and driver of the Citi Golf and the driver and passenger of the bakkie.
All three men, believed to have been around the ages of 25 – 35 were trapped in the mangled wreckages of what remained of their vehicles. Nothing more could be done to save their lives and they were declared dead. The local Fire Department would need to use the Jaws of Life tow remove their remains from the wrecks.
Shortly after 3 am Witbank crews rushed out to the scene of an accident on the N12 which had taken place approximately 2 kilometers from the Watermeyer off ramp outside of Witbank.
A single vehicle had left the road and the vehicle had rolled into a roadside ditch. The vehicle was barely visible from the road and one of the two occupants had died due to the nature of injuries that they had sustained. The other patient was transported to hospital by the Provincial Services ambulance.
Vanessa Jackson, ER24
084 222 1078