Driver pulls 'knife' on motorist outside petrol station

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The incident happened on Monday afternoon in Llanddulas, a village in North Wales, just off the North Wales Expressway. Paramedics Seren Williams and Tia Richards were on the way to collect a patient when their ambulance ran out of fuel and broke down.

A backup ambulance was sent out, but it also had to abandon its rescue mission due to a lack of fuel.

Describing the ordeal, Seren said: “It’s ridiculous at the minute that emergency services and vital services can’t get fuel because people are panicking that there is a shortage.”

She added: “there wasn’t a shortage until people started being ridiculous with how much fuel they were buying.”

Touching on the struggles emergency services staff are currently facing, she added: “it’s making our jobs a lot harder and it’s worrying for everyone not knowing if we are going to be able to do our jobs.”

It seems however that luck was on the side of the pair who were collected by members of the public who gave them a lift back to their patrol base in Flintshire.

Urging the public against panic-buying petrol, Ms Williams said: “think before you fill up, do you really need to?”

The ongoing petrol shortage has caused the government to consider deploying the army to deliver fuel as a shortage of HGV drivers brings sees queues of people waiting for petrol and diesel across the country,

Ambulance services across England have moved to allay concerns they could run out of fuel amid the widespread shortages.

Health unions have also urged for NHS and other front line workers to be given priority when filling up at forecourts.

John McSorley, strategic commander for the Yorkshire Ambulance Service trust told The Independent, “currently we have sufficient fuel stocks for our ambulance vehicles. We have robust businesses community plans in place to ensure we are able to respond to patients needing our assistance and can invoke additional measures should they be required.”

When considering the fact that frontline workers need their own vehicle to even make it to work in the first place, Mr McSorley said: “We know that, like many others, some colleagues have found it difficult to obtain fuel for their own vehicles and we a staff transport plan that can be activated should the situation escalate further.”

Most other Ambulance services in the UK have not reported any problems, or have their own fuel supplies.

All have assured the public they are still able to respond if required.

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As measures are considered to improve the crisis, with the army on standby, the Government has announced that the situation appears ‘to be easing’.

Leader of the Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer has stated that the country is ‘lurching from crisis to crisis’ under the Tory government, whilst new Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has suggested low-level offenders and prisoners could be used to drive the nations understaffed HGV fleet.

Blaming the Government’s lack of action further, Sir Keir told Sky News, “we have got an energy crisis, we have got food bills going up, we have energy bills going up… millions of families struggling to make ends meet.”

He added: “We have got a cost of living crisis… we have got people desperately worried about how they are going to get to work next week… nurses, teachers worried about whether they are going to have petrol in their car to get to where they need to be.”

However, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Simon Clarke denied that the situation had been caused by an exodus of workers and HGV drivers following Brexit.

“I really don’t accept that… we have a problem that we need to fix, but one that is shared by other European countries too,” said Mr Clarke.

Mr Clarke went on to say: “the idea that this is about Brexit is to try and take us back into what is really quite a negative conversation about opportunities foregone when, if you look at the situation in Europe, they share these problems too”.

No reports of fuel shortages, food shortages or lack of drivers has been reported in any other EU nation.

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