A special emergency patient rescue chair is being used as a ‘drunks chair’ to remove racegoers from the field
A SPECIAL “drunks chair” used to remove over indulgent racegoers from the field at Derby Day is officially a Ferno Carry Chair.
IT IS officially an emergency and rescue patient handling device, but it could have been invented as a chair for drunks at Melbourne’s annual Spring racing carnival.
Last Saturday, as racegoers became a little worse for wear in their black-and-white finery at Derby Day, members of the St Johns Ambulance brigade wheeled out the rescue chair for at least one female guest.
Her head slumped back in the chair and two orange and black velcro restraints tied around her ankles and the waist of her black race day frock, the woman was wheeled by three ambulance officers away from festivities on the field.
Captured on camera, the woman was among 90,000 punters who flocked to Flemington at the weekend for a traditional day of betting, fashion and fun.
Among the revellers who featured in images from the day were some who ended up lying passed out or under arrest and who might have been better off leaving the field in the “drunks chair”.
Called the Ferno 2045 Carry Chair, the device had everything for the overindulgent racegoer.
According to St Johns Ambulance, which says “we’ve been using them for years” the Ferno chair is taken to major events where they provide patient services.
Ferno, an international company which provides emergency rescue and height safety equipment, manufactures a number of chairs designed to evacuate people up to 227kg from areas including up and down stairs.
The Ferno 2045 Carry Chair used on Derby Day has a head end extension, simple fold-out foot handles and a storage pocket for restraints and patient belongings.
The chair, which “unfolds instantly ready for use” features chest, thigh and ankle restraints.
On its Australian website, Ferno promotes the device as “lightweight and manoeuvrable with the capability of quickly and easily converting into a track chair for downstairs transfers and says it “removes the need to lift the patient when descending, minimising operator injury risk”.
The scenes of drunken revelry from Derby Day look set to be repeated at Flemington on Tuesday, when the Melbourne Cup is run.
Arriving dressed to the nines in three-piece suits, pretty dresses and fascinators, the revellers get famously trashed on the day of “the race that stops the nation”.
Pictured at the end of the day after hours of drinking, betting and partying, many racegoers might be better off making it home via a Ferno “drunks chair”.
Last year one Melbourne Cup racegoer, dubbed“the woman in the blue dress”, was caught on camera pushing a police officer into a garden bed.
Wearing a short blue dress, the 25-year-old was filmed sprinting in a pair of black stilettos to Acting Superintendent Steven Cooper while he was speaking on the phone.
She then shoved him backwards into a bush — breaking his glasses — just moments before he was due to update the media on crowd behaviour.
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