Animal ambulance needs blue light

I refer to Bill Andrews' letter Emergency Lights On Animal Ambulance, (August 10).

I ran the very first animal ambulance in 1995 and we started off with an orange light emergency beacon. The result was that during an emergency while carrying badly injured animals, no one would give way for us to pass freely as seeing the orange light drivers used to think that we were a towing service or transporting refuse. Hence on many occasions animals suffered haemorrhage and died on the way to the vet as we were caught in traffic.

Thanks to the mature understanding of the then police traffic superintendent Alfred Abela, our ambulance was given permission to use the blue light. This made a big difference even to human beings, as in some cases we also used our blue-light ambulance to assist during traffic accidents till the police vehicles arrived on the spot while waiting for the St Luke's Hospital ambulances.

Notwithstanding that we had the blue light there were odd times when we used to be stuck in heavy traffic, only to be assisted by traffic police who escorted us to the vets themselves.

I would say that emergency lights and siren on Noah's Ark animal ambulances are a must.