By Vivienne Paterson

Last updated at 12:04, Friday, 21 September 2012

A young mum who was on her way to hospital to have a baby has told how she clambered out of an ambulance ‘hanging on’ to gas and air wearing only a sheet after a fire broke out under the bonnet.

Kellie Lamb with son Devlin

Kellie Lamb, 23, was left standing in the middle of the street having contractions when a passing bus stopped to offer her shelter.

She was eventually put in a police car while they waited for a replacement ambulance and remembers watching firefighters putting out the fire as her contractions got stronger.

“It was horrible,” she said of her ordeal, which started on Tuesday morning when she called an ambulance after her contractions started the night before. Kellie, of Buttermere Road, Maryport said they had just got past Siddick when “there was a bang.”

“The ambulance driver stopped to check the tyres but could see nothing,” she said.

“Then, at Northside, he stopped again and said we had to get out because the ambulance was on fire.

“I was hanging on to the gas and air as I climbed out of the ambulance and one of the paramedics was holding onto the sheet that was covering me.”

Naked apart from the blue sheet when she was moved, she was having contractions every two minutes, she said.

“I got out of the ambulance and was having a contraction in the middle of the street when a bus driver came and asked if I would like to sit in his bus until a replacement ambulance arrived from Distington.

“There were a few passengers including a little girl who wanted to know everything that was happening and two elderly people at the back who did not seem very pleased.

“Eventually we saw an ambulance service car coming and I got out only to watch it drive past. It was attending another emergency.”

At this point, two police officers who were “just watching what was going on” put her in their car to wait.

“By this time the contractions were getting stronger,” she said.

“I can remember seeing a fire engine putting the fire out but I wasn’t really concentrating on what was happening – just on getting the gas and air and dealing with the contractions.”

When she eventually got to West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven, she had several contractions and delivered a baby boy, 7lb 11oz Devlin.

“[The incident] was not what I had expected,” she said.

Devlin has settled in at home and met his dad, Shaun Fearon and his big sisters Nicole, six, and Lexi-Jo, two.

First published at 11:29, Friday, 21 September 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk