A 59-year-old man has been taken to hospital suffering from burns after an explosion on a canal narrowboat.
The blast happened on Tuesday evening on the Shropshire Union Canal about one mile west of Oswestry, Shropshire. An ambulance service volunteer flagged down a passing boat to take the injured man to the nearest lock, which was the closest the ambulance crew could get. The man, from Nantwich in Cheshire, was taken to hospital for treatment to burns to his face, arms and feet. A woman on board the boat was left shaken but otherwise unhurt. Effie Cadwallader, the community first responder who was first at the scene, said: "I managed to get my car along the tow path to where the narrow boat was. "Given the location it was obvious to me that there was no way that an ambulance would get to the scene so I flagged down a passing boat and put the patient on board. "It was perhaps an unusual way to start his journey to hospital but it was definitely going to be the quickest way." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/shropshire/7620699.stm>
