Santa Paula man killed in head-on crash near Saticoy
VENTURA COUNTY, Calif. - California Highway Patrol and Ventura County firefighters responded to a fatal crash near Saticoy Friday afternoon.
The crash was first reported around 1:37 p.m. on Foothill Road just east of N. Saticoy Avenue.
CHP said a 1992 Chevrolet Silverado driven by a 62-year-old Santa Paula man was traveling eastbound on Foothill while a 2008 Toyota Highlander driven by a 29-year-old man from Wilmington was driving westbound.
For reasons still under investigation, the Toyota allegedly merged into the eastbound lane from the west, crashing head-on into the Chevrolet.
The Chevrolet driver was killed on impact and the Toyota driver was transported to Ventura County Medical Center with serious injuries. The man s current condition is unclear.
Operational Update: Infusions of Respiratory Support, PPE for Hospitals Continue
Prepped for departure from Direct Relief s warehouse, medical aid is staged on Thursday, Jan. 21, 2021, bound for health facilities across the globe. (Tony Morain/Direct Relief)
Over the past seven days, Direct Relief has shipped requested medical aid to 41 U.S. states and territories and 16 countries around the world, amounting to more than 10 million Defined Daily Doses of medication.
Operational activity remains high for California, where cases continue to break records week after week. This week, it became the first U.S. state to record a total of 3 million cases since the pandemic began.
Hospitals in Ventura County are having to add more storage space for bodies as coronavirus deaths and cases climb across the region.
County public health officials are now dealing with the surge in cases and hospitalizations following the holidays that they had warned about, including a strain on available hospital beds. The sustained surge that we re experiencing has put tremendous pressure on our hospitals. We are full. When I walked into my shift yesterday, more than half of our emergency department beds were occupied by patients who needed a hospital bed but were waiting for space to open up, said Dr. Rick Rutherford with the Ventura County Medical Center.
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KCLU s Lance Orozco talks with some of the front line hospital personnel in Ventura County battling the COVID-19 surge which has swamped many of the county s eight hospitals.
At first glance, they re just numbers. They are shocking numbers, but numbers. 1520 people were diagnosed with COVID-19 in Ventura County Wednesday. But, they are much more than that to thousands of families in the county. They are fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, grandmothers and grandfathers.
Some of them will end up in the county’s eight hospitals. But, the hospitals are already packed, and doctors, nurses, and other staff are struggling to handle it.
VENTURA, Calif. (KABC) Ventura County is dealing with a holiday surge. The eight-hospital system is near capacity with nearly 1,000 patients and nearly half of them are infected with COVID-19. Fourty-four percent roughly have patients in the hospital are COVID patients, and it s a record number of patients we have county-wide. It is a great strain on the system. The hospitals and their wonderful professionals are doing an amazing job of managing it. We can t keep it up at this rate said Ventura County CEO Michael Powers. The hospitals are very full. Our ERs are very full. At times we don t have places to put ambulances. The more ambulances come into our hospitals, there s no place to put those patients, said Steve Carroll with Ventura County Emergency Medical.