BMC Officer Uses Pic From Guernsey to Show Maha’s Boat Ambulance

This is an old image and shows a Guernsey marine ambulance.

Several social media users including Amey Ghole, chairman, health committee, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, shared an image of a marine ambulance to claim that Maharashtra is introducing boat ambulance from Mandwa to the Gateway of India.

While it’s true that Maharashtra government is planning to roll out a water ambulance, however, the image being used is old and shows a Guernsey marine ambulance.

CLAIM

Shiv Sena leader Priyanka Chaturvedi, too, retweeted Ghole’s tweet to state that it is a “good intervention and initiative” by the government.

Several social media users shared the image with the same claim on Twitter and Facebook.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We reverse searched the image on Google and found a BBC article published in 2014 mentioning that it is from Guernsey island.

The headline reads: “Guernsey marine ambulance off water after gearbox fails.”

On looking carefully at the viral image, we found that the boat mentions “Guernsey” and “Flying Christine III”.

Flying Christine III is the marine equivalent of an accident and emergency ambulance and was launched in 1994.

We could trace back the image of the same boat, shot from a different angle, to as old as 2012.

ABOUT MAHARASHTRA’S BOAT AMBULANCE

The government of Maharashtra is planning to make use of Mumbai’s waterways by rolling out a water ambulance service between Gateway of India in south Mumbai to Mandwa in Raigad district, The Print reported.

According to The Print, a state health department official said, “Currently, the Alibaug district hospital is the only big hospital for the villages around Mandwa, but travelling from far-off villages from Murud or Shrivardhan taluka to the main town of Alibaug can also take more than two hours. The water ambulance will help any patient travel to a Mumbai hospital from Mandwa within the golden hour.”

Evidently, an old and unrelated image of a marine ambulance is being associated with Maharashtra government introducing water ambulance from Mandwa to Gateway of India.

(With inputs from SM Hoax Slayer)

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