Striking workers say 'no' to crash
2009-08-03 09:22
Johannesburg - Striking municipal firefighters on Friday refused to go out to a crash scene and cut a badly injured woman and the body of her husband from a car wreck, after an accident in which their two babies died.
Firefighters from Eskom's Kriel power station then helped them.
Hester Meyer of Langa Med ambulances found one of the babies, a newborn boy, outside at the back of the wreck.
"I had to wipe away the tears when I picked up the little baby in his yellow clothes. I declared him dead on the scene."
Meyer said the other baby, a one-year-old girl, also had to be cut from the wreck and died on the scene.
The names of the family members were being withheld as the next-of-kin had not all been informed yet.
Collided with bakkie
The accident happened at about 10:00 on Friday at the intersection of Kriel-Witbank and Clewer-Bethal roads, about 5km outside Kriel.
The family was in a blue Volkswagen Polo en route from Kriel to Witbank when a white Toyota bakkie coming from Clewer collided with them, said Captain Chris van der Merwe, Kriel's chief of detectives.
The Polo started spinning and landed on its roof.
Some of the passengers were trapped in the Polo and couldn’t be removed. They had to be cut from the wreck with mechanical equipment.
Van der Merwe called the Kriel power station's firefighters to the accident scene and took them there personally.
Refused to help
"The closest emergency services are those of the municipal fire department in Kriel, which is part of the Emalahleni Municipality," he said. "The striking firefighters here refused to help."
The injured woman was being treated at the intensive care unit of the Kosmos Hospital in Witbank. She apparently broke both her legs and has chest fractures.
The eldest daughter, 16, was not injured seriously. She had already been discharged from hospital. The driver of the bakkie had minor injuries. Police are investigating a case of culpable homicide.