{"id":61941,"date":"2026-07-31T00:10:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T00:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/61941\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T00:10:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T00:10:42","slug":"ambulance-destroyed-by-fire-at-hospital-on-tasmanias-west-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/61941\/","title":{"rendered":"Ambulance destroyed by fire at hospital on Tasmania&#8217;s west coast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">An ambulance caught fire on Tasmania&#8217;s west coast on Wednesday night, destroying it and slightly damaging the exterior of the region&#8217;s hospital.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">A Department of Health spokesperson said the ambulance was parked outside the West Coast District Hospital at Queenstown.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The ambulance was unoccupied at the time of the fire, and no patients or staff were injured or harmed,&#8221;  they said.Loading&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">The hospital itself was also largely unaffected, aside from some &#8220;minor damage to some exterior lights&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">They said a replacement ambulance has been deployed to Queenstown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">The Department of Police, Fire and Emergency Management said an investigation had concluded the fire started accidentally, and there were no suspicious circumstances.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ambulance destroyed by fire in a car park area.\" class=\"Image_image__5tFYM ContentImage_image__DQ_cq\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/76be966967738dc2c17ec7756e886172.jpeg\" loading=\"lazy\" data-component=\"Image\" data-lazy=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"Typography_base__sj2RP FigureCaption_text__zDxQ5 Typography_sizeMobile12__w_FPC Typography_lineHeightMobile20___U7Vr Typography_regular__WeIG6 Typography_colourInherit__dfnUx\" data-component=\"Typography\">The Department of Health says a replacement ambulance has been deployed to Queenstown. (Supplied: Catherine Holmes)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Robbie Moore, state secretary of the Health and Community Services Union, said the Department of Health needed to conduct its own &#8220;transparent&#8221; investigation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are obviously relieved that nobody was injured in this incident,&#8221;  Mr Moore said.<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A man in a check shirt watching someone speak to media on camera.\" class=\"Image_image__5tFYM ContentImage_image__DQ_cq\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/5db906286a0a4d0b2de5f478d940ed41.jpeg\" loading=\"lazy\" data-component=\"Image\" data-lazy=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"Typography_base__sj2RP FigureCaption_text__zDxQ5 Typography_sizeMobile12__w_FPC Typography_lineHeightMobile20___U7Vr Typography_regular__WeIG6 Typography_colourInherit__dfnUx\" data-component=\"Typography\">Robbie Moore says the Department of Health should conduct an independent investigation into the incident.\u00a0 (ABC News: Luke Bowden)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;[But] there does need to be a full investigation to see that all the safety procedures are in place \u2026 as well as work out exactly how this happened.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;I&#8217;m certainly not aware of an incident similar to this.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">He said the union understood that &#8220;things happen from time to time&#8221;, but staff and patients deserved &#8220;full transparency&#8221; to understand what occurred.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These things in a health setting are complex \u2026 and measures need to be taken to make sure that things like this don&#8217;t occur again.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Further comment has been sought from the Department of Health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An ambulance caught fire on Tasmania&#8217;s west coast on Wednesday night, destroying it and slightly damaging the exterior&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2712,22,21,71477,9421,844,39,71478,5951,5247,53241,71476],"class_list":["post-61941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-ambulance","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-burn","tag-department-of-health","tag-fire","tag-hospital","tag-robbie-moore","tag-tas","tag-tasmania","tag-tassie","tag-west-coast-district-hospital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}