As is probably extremely obvious this question arose because of the mass-murder in Norway, but it’s made me curious about European ambulances in general.
It’s rather hard to tell from what little they show on the news, but the Oslo ambulances on the news appear to be quite a bit smaller than those that we have on this side of the pond. Are they? When they shoved a stretcher into an ambulance there didn’t appear to be much if any room for an EMT to work on the patient en route to the hospital. Do they just squeeze in tight? Do they have bigger ambulances where needed?
I wondered the same thing (ambulances looking very small), so it’s not an “European” type of ambulance.
When I think of it, wasn’t it on the island? Maybe those vehicles were the only ones they got there (and being used just to bring not too severely wounded people to a boat or something)?
I wonder if there is a difference between types of ambulances in Norway like there is in Germany.
Here there are two main types of ambulances:
emergency ambulances (Rettungstransportwagen - RTW) - for patients who need critical care or monitoring before arrival at a hospital. They are usually based on a small-truck-body.
ambulances (Krankentransportwagen - KTW) - for transport of patients who don’t need immediate treatment, e.g. transfer of stable, even ambulatory patients from a general to a specialist hospital, transport of dialysis patients to/from dialysis, etc. - for example, when a crept into my GP’s practice with pneumonia more than a decade ago, the emergency services sent a KTW to convey me to hospital. KTW are usually based on a van body, but often also on a sedan body.
Perhaps, if the same difference obtains in Norway, the ambulances in the news were the non-emergency type pressed into emergency service due to the unusual number of victims.
I didn’t get a good enough look (and saw them from the rear) to be positive, but what I saw seems like naita’s link of the Mercedes Rescueline, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if I wasn’t even close. The body of the vehicle in amanset’s link seems bigger than what I saw, but again I could be totally wrong.
Clairobscur - I’m sure I was seeing the aftereffects of the Oslo bombing, not the island massacre.
they are and they aren’t. they are basically Dodge / Mercedes commercial vans, similar to the one described here but manufactured by Iveco (Italy), Mercedes and Volkswagen (Germany or whatever), Renault and Peugeot (France) and perhaps other brands too.
keep in mind that European cars in general are smaller and the vans are too. in the ambulance situation, the “useful” area in the back is pretty much the same, but longer and narrower than the Crestline-type ambulances found in North America.
Crestline-type layout guidelines, if I am not mistaken, provide for a “regular” stretcher and room for a second stretcher on the paramedic side bench (some of them have notches to hold the stretcher legs in place between the bench cushions) whereas European guidelines provide for just one stretcher.
source: I volunteered for a while as a helping hand in the local FD/ambulance service, and I moved to Canada from Europe.
