Close Call for Woman Who Needed Power Wheelchair to Escape
the Blaze
OPELIKA, Ala., June 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — When
Roena Hall, 75, received a power
wheelchair through Medicare a year ago, it improved her mobility
and relieved some of the pain in her back. But she didn’t
realize that the medical device would also help save her life.
Two weeks ago, as Hall fried fish for lunch in the kitchen of
her converted trailer home, grease in the frying pan suddenly
caught fire. As she moved the pan to the sink, flames shot up
igniting the cabinets and the rest of the kitchen. Thinking
fast, Hall maneuvered her power chair to the living room, where she
called 911, and told them her house was in flames.
“They asked me if I could get out safely, and I told them, ‘No!’
because I was in a wheelchair,” she recalls. “They told me to get
out to the porch and they would send a Sheriff’s Deputy to help
me.”
Seconds later, Hall was on the front porch as her home of more
than 40 years was fully engulfed in flames that blazed dangerously
towards the front porch. Luckily, a Deputy from the Lee County Sheriff’s Department was
driving nearby, and arrived in time to help Hall down the stairs,
and then bring her power wheelchair to safety.
“When I was on the porch, I didn’t know what I could do,” she
says. “The wheelchair had carried me that far. But there were steps
and I couldn’t get to the ground. The Deputy got there in five
minutes, so I was very lucky. He helped me down, and grabbed my
wheelchair just before the flames got to the porch.”
Not every Medicare beneficiary is impacted by a power wheelchair
as dramatically as
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