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Every year, around a few special times like New Years’ or the World Cup, London City presses into service an ambulance that’s designated solely to pick up revelers who are too drunk to think straight. As New Year’s Eve approaches, staff of the “Booze Bus” as it’s called are gearing up for another round of drunks, many of them vomiting and soiling themselves, and all of them too dazed to speak.
The Booze Bus operates on weekends throughout December as well as Christmas and New Years’ when the drinking and puking carnage reaches its zenith. You have to feel for the paramedics who man the ambulance — stuck in an enclosed cramped space reeking of booze, vomit and urine, with drunks in all stages of degradation around them.
The bus is the brainchild of paramedic Brian Hayes who approached the idea as a way of making the season more bearable for over-stressed ambulances. This way, the drunks get their own joy ride to the hospital, while the ambulances can be free for other and more genuine emergencies.