MONTICELLO, Maine — A Caribou ambulance sustained extensive damage early Friday morning and knocked out power to the area after the driver reportedly fell asleep behind the wheel and struck a utility pole. Neither the driver nor the passenger, another EMT, were injured, according to police.
Nicholas Pelletier, 18, of Caribou was traveling north on U.S. Route 1 in a 2009 Ford Ambulance for the Caribou Ambulance service around 12:51 a.m. when he told police he fell asleep behind the wheel, drifted off the right-hand side of the road and hit a utility pole.
The impact caused extensive damage to the front end of the ambulance, according to a press release issued Friday by Maine State Police Cpl. Dennis Quint.
Quint said the ambulance was not transporting a patient at the time of the crash. However, a second EMT, John Thornton, 49, of Woodland was in the back section of the rig at the time of the crash.
Neither occupant was injured in the crash, Quint said.
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- A Caribou ambulance struck this utility pole in Bridgewater early Friday morning as it was travelling north. Power was knocked out for several hours, but restored by 8:30 a.m. (Maine State Police)
U.S. Route 1 was closed for about three hours due to power lines having been knocked down into the roadway.
“The pole broke away from the base and a power transformer dislodged and fell to the ground,” Quint said. “The power lines became tangled in the trees, causing a power surge leading to the outage.”
A crews from Emera Maine responded, removed the lines from the roadway, and had power restored to all affected customers by about 8:30 a.m. Friday. Cable television service also was knocked out by the crash and had yet to be restored by 10:30 a.m. Friday.
Bob Potts of Emera Maine said the initial outage caused an interruption to about 300 customers.
“Emera Maine crews were able to re-route circuits to restore power to all but 149 of those by 4 a.m.,” he said. “Once Fairpoint set a new pole and we transferred wires we got everyone restored around 8:30 this morning.”
The ambulance had to be towed from the scene. The crash remains under investigation.
It marks the second time in a month that an ambulance driver reported falling asleep behind the wheel. On July 12, a Fort Kent ambulance overturned while traveling north on Route 11 at 4 a.m.
