Airplane adversity precedes boy's birth
By Carl Clutchey - The Chronicle-Journal
January 03, 2004
Despite being in advanced labour with her third child, Schreiber’s Linda Williamson gingerly walked down the steps of a damaged air ambulance after it skidded off a local runway late in the afternoon on a snowy New Year’s Day.
“I had to get down the stairs myself,” Williamson, 38, recalled yesterday from her hospital room. “They couldn’t take me down on the stretcher because the plane’s tail was in the air.”
About 20 minutes after getting off the plane, Williamson gave birth to a healthy, dark-haired baby girl after being rushed by land ambulance to McCausland Hospital, a short drive from Terrace Bay’s municipal airport.
The infant, named Elizabeth, was delivered by nurses and the air ambulance’s two paramedics because there was no doctor immediately available at McCausland, a small hospital located in the town of 2,000.
A Ministry of Health spokeswoman said Terrace Bay isn’t considered underserviced and normally has two doctors there.
Williamson had been put on an air ambulance bound for Thunder Bay Regional Hospital as a precaution because her doctor was out of town this week. Her daughter was born a month ahead of her due-date.
The twin-engine, Thunder Airlines King Air air ambulance skidded into a snowbank during takeoff just after 5 p.m. Thursday, coming to a stop about six metres from the runway.
The plane was slightly damaged but nobody on board, including the aircraft’s two pilots and paramedics, were injured.
“I felt the plane go faster, and then it did a little shimmy,” Williamson recalled. “It was scary, but then I thought: ‘We didn’t flip, we’re not on fire, and everyone’s OK.’”
Thunder Airlines president Ken Bittle said the plane appears to have drifted close to the edge of the Terrace Bay Airport runway, which was plowed but not to full-width.
Bittle said that wasn’t unusual for a small airport that doesn’t have regular passenger service.
The King Air was to undergo an inspection, but Bittle said he expected it will be able to be flown out — without passengers on board — to a repair hangar.
Police said in a news release they notified the Transportation Safety Board of Canada about the incident.
Board spokesman Jim Leveque couldn’t say yesterday whether an investigator would look into the matter.
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