LAUDERDALE LAKES, FLA. (WSVN) - During a rainy Tuesday afternoon, a woman’s electric wheelchair broke down in Lauderdale Lakes, leaving the woman alone and stranded.
Before long, a passerby called 911 and a Broward Sheriff’s Fire Rescue crew was dispatched to the area of SR-7 and Northwest 36th Street, where they gave her a helping hand.
“There’s a lady in a wheelchair, and her wheelchair stopped, and she can’t move,” the caller told 911 dispatchers.
Two fire rescue officials, James Winkle and Jim Mullins, from Engine 37, found the woman stranded in the roadway. They took turns pushing Jennifer Bastilda in her wheelchair about a half mile back to the fire station.
“The rain had stopped, but there was another storm moving in, so firefighters did what firefighters do,” Broward Fire Rescue official Mike Jachles said.
Bastilda needs to get out of her apartment and into one that accommodates her disability. She was out looking for one, Tuesday, when her wheelchair broke down.
After taking turns pushing the woman and arriving to the station, they called and arranged a cab to pick her up.
A repairman worked on her chair, Wednesday, and got it running again. Still, it’s five years old and Bastilda will need a new one.
“If it gets wet, there’s no warning whatsoever. It just stops,” he said.
She also needs an apartment more suited to her needs.
“I just need a handicap accessible apartment,” she said. “Because this is kind of cramped and kind of tight in here to move around in, but I was trying to go look for an apartment.”
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