After a long wait, an Aroostook County ambulance company now can really haul – big time.
Southern Aroostook Emergency Medical Services Authority has been weighting two years for its new heavy-duty medical wagon.
“We ordered it in 2023,” authority chairman Dan Hiebert. “It was at the end of COVID and there were no trucks available.”
Agency director Addison Matthews said the ambulance will serve communities across Aroostook County.
The heavy-hauling rig – called a bariatric ambulance – has a special heavy-duty stretcher as well as a winch to handle 1,600-pound “loads.”
At a cost of $404,802, one would certainly hope so.
It ain’t cheap hauling people who weigh more than three-quarters of a ton.
The emergency-medical needs of people with severe obesity weren’t previously available in Aroostook County, Hiebert said.
Thirty-three percent – more than one of every three Mainers – are classified as obese, a fancy way of saying we’re, like, really, really fat.
The obesity rate in Aroostook County is 40 percent, nearly a quarter above the state average.
That puts it on par with Arkansas, the fattest state in the country.
A patient weighing more than 1,600 pounds in southern Aroostook would have to call someone such as Bailey’s Towing, which specializes in heavy haul.
Sorry not sorry, that’s a joke but seriously if you’re so heavy they need to winch you in then you need a mirror – not an ambulance.
Aroostook isn’t the only county in Maine dealing with fat jokes.
Maine overall is the plumpest state in New England, liberal Massachusetts the leanest, according to the Trust for America’s Health.
Cumberland County is the skinniest County in the Pine Tree State, with an obesity rate of 29.5 percent. But that’s because vain liberals don’t eat potato chips.
Colorado is the thinnest state nationwide, with an obesity rate of 25 percent.
But they’re similar to Cumberland County – they don’t eat potatoes in tony Aspen.
