On Sunday, April 19, an ambulance was responding to a crash in southwest Omaha when it was involved in an accident.

According to the Omaha Police Department the first accident happened shortly after 5 p.m. on 118th Street when the driver of a 2012 Toyota Camry, 37 year old Rachel L. Willis lost control of the vehicle as it was traveling northbound and collided with a utility pole. The car left the roadway and overturned before colliding with a second metal light pole and coming to a halt on a grassy embankment near a car wash.

Willis had critical and life threatening injuries and one of the passengers, 25 year old Tanya M. Arellano also had serious injuries which were not thought to be life threatening. The third person in the vehicle was also seriously injured. All three were taken to Nebraska Medicine. None were wearing seat belts. At this time both speed and alcohol are thought to be factors in the collision.

As medics were on their way to the scene, the ambulance was making a U-turn with lights and sirens were on, when it also was involved in a collision. No one was seriously hurt in that crash.

If you or a loved one have been injured in an accident in Omaha, please call the Omaha accident attorneys of Harris & Associates, P.C., L.L.O., at (402) 397-1200 or contact us online today. We can help you review your compensation options and ensure you are receiving the compensation you deserve.

Early in the morning on Sunday, 21 March an Omaha man was killed in a two vehicle accident.

According to the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office the crash happened at 6.40 a.m. on Southwest 100th Street between U.S. 33 and West Wittstruck Road.

Mario Loarca-Garcia, aged 31 from Omaha was driving his 2008 red Kia Rio southbound on Southwest 100th Street when for an unknown reason he crossed into the northbound lane and hit a maroon 2001 Buick LeSabre driven by 44 year old Merri Bradley of rural Crete.

Loarca-Garcia was pronounced dead at the scene and Bradley was taken to Bryan West Campus with critical injuries which are thought to be life threatening and she remains in a critical condition although is said to be stable.

Both drivers were alone in their vehicles and both were using seat belts with airbags deploying also in both vehicles.

The investigation is still ongoing and no citations have been issued at this time.

If you or a loved one have been injured in an accident in Omaha, please call the Omaha accident attorneys of Harris & Associates, P.C., L.L.O., at (402) 397-1200 or contact us online today. We can help you review your compensation options and ensure you are receiving the compensation you deserve.

More and more places are looking to ban sledding as the legal costs and payouts made by insurance companies are running into several million dollars.

Sledding leads to thousands of injuries every year and the municipalities often end up compensating the victims. Whilst sledding is an enjoyable pastime for many, it is not at all uncommon for people to be injured, and especially children. A study from the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital highlighted that nearly a quarter of a million children and teens were treated in emergency rooms for injuries due to sledding between 1997 to 2007. While many accidents can just be cuts and bruises, fractures are not unusual and sledding accidents will often lead to a traumatic brain injury.

The accidents often lead to six figure settlements in those municipalities which have snow. In Omaha, for example, the city had to pay out $2.4 million to one family as their daughter was left paralyzed from the chest down, having hit a tree while on her sled.

If you or a loved one have been injured in an accident in Omaha, please call the Omaha accident attorneys of Harris & Associates, P.C., L.L.O., at (402) 397-1200 or contact us online today. We can help you review your compensation options and ensure you are receiving the compensation you deserve.

A U.S. airman has drowned at Lake Manawa State Park.

According to officials the incident happened just before 2 p.m. on Sunday when the airman and 36 year old Master Sergeant Benjamin Ferguson were crossing the lake in a canoe when it hit a thin layer of ice and tipped over. Ferguson was able to swim to shore which took 20 to 30 minutes in freezing water but the airman did not make it.

Ferguson was taken to Mercy Hospital in Council Bluffs with extreme hypothermia but is now in fair condition.

Firefighters from Council Bluffs and Omaha searched for the drowning victim until the recovery effort was called off due to lack of light. They returned on Monday morning and recovered the victim’s body.

An Offutt Air Force Base spokesman said the victim worked at the weather agency for Offutt in Bellevue.

Lake Manawa is a shallow 772-acre oxbow lake of the Missouri River with a maximum depth of 11 feet.

If you or a loved one have been injured in an accident in Omaha, please call the Omaha auto accident attorneys of Harris & Associates at (402) 397-1200 or contact us online today. We can help you review your compensation options and ensure you are receiving the compensation you deserve.

On Wednesday, a woman died and two other people were critically injured after a two vehicle collision

According to Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, the accident happened near North Platte, Nebraska when 59 year old Vicky Allen was driving a minivan southbound on U.S. Highway 83 near mile marker 87. She was carrying two passengers, Michelle Heisz, aged 34, and her 3 year old daughter. Allen was driving up a hill and for some reason, crossed the center line and collided head on with a northbound semitrailer truck driven by 29 year old Corey Peters of North Platte.

Michelle Heisz was pronounced dead at the scene. Allen and Heisz’s daughter were hospitalized in critical condition and the child was later flown to Omaha for additional medical treatment. All are from Stapleton, Nebraska. Peters did not have life-threatening injuries.

Authorities said that alcohol was not a factor and that the adults in both vehicles were wearing seat belts and the toddler was in a car seat.

If you or a loved one have been injured in an accident in Omaha, please call the Omaha auto accident attorneys of Harris & Associates at (402) 397-1200 or contact us online today. We can help you review your compensation options and ensure you are receiving the compensation you deserve.

Linda Proessnecker was injured in a car accident. She was firstly driven in an ambulance to West Holt Memorial Hospital, but it was decided she needed specialist care at Bryan Medical Center so she was flown in a medical helicopter 167 miles from Atkinson, Nebraska, to a hospital in Lincoln.

At the time she did not think about the cost as she assumed it would be covered by her insurance policy.

The air ambulance bill for Linda came to just over $44,000 and luckily for her, her insurance company paid for all but $980 of it.  She is definitely grateful her insurance covered as much as it did, as many are not as lucky.

Now the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in Nebraska are warning people to check what their policies cover or don’t, and have issued an alert about the cost of air ambulances as they have been receiving complaints from those left with huge bills following motor vehicle and other accidents.

Another Nebraskan complained that he took an air ambulance to Omaha with a possible heart attack and assumed he was covered but the particular service he used, LifeNet, was not one of the providers his insurance company had an arrangement with, so although they paid their standard fee, he was faced with a balance to pay to the helicopter company of $32,000.

It is up to the hospitals or the paramedics to call for air transport and at those times the patient is usually too ill to even think of checking their insurance company to see if they are covered for the particular air transport provider.

There are several ways to ensure you are covered, whether using a separate policy or as part of your main health insurance provider so it is worth checking now, before the day you need the transport.

If you or a loved one have been injured in an accident in Omaha, please call the Omaha auto accident attorneys of Harris & Associates at (402) 397-1200 or contact us online today. We can help you review your compensation options and ensure you are receiving the compensation you deserve.

A jury has awarded $900,000 to an ex train conductor who sued Union Pacific after suffering injuries in a 2010 derailment in Columbus.

It took the jury in Douglas County more than four hours to reach their verdict in favor of 68 year old Loren Sweley of North Platte.

The train was traveling at about 50 mph on a foggy night in January 2010 when it hit a bulldozer doing work on the unlighted track. There was no time to slow or stop the train, as it can take a mile of more to stop a train with 100 cars.  Around 22 cars of the train were derailed and Sweley and the engineer were trapped in the wreckage and had to be cut free.

Sweley suffered severe spinal injuries which needed extensive surgery to fuse some of the vertebrae. He was left unable to work again. The engineer reached a settlement with the company.

If you or a loved one have been injured in a train accident in Omaha, please call the Omaha auto accident attorneys of Harris & Associates at (402) 397-1200 or contact us online today. We can help you review your compensation options and ensure you are receiving the compensation you deserve.

On Thursday evening, three residents from Grand Island were killed in a plane crash in northwest Ohio.

According to authorities the plane had taken off from Central Nebraska Regional Airport just after noon on Thursday and arrived as planned in Washington, Iowa some two hours later. Around 40 minutes later they took off for Findaly, Ohio, stopping in Fort Wayne en route. However, the plane disappeared from the radar in Paudling County at 6 p.m. when it was at around 5,000 feet. The crash site was about 30 miles east of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and 70 miles southwest of Toledo.

The aircraft, a single-engine, four-seat SR22 Cirrus, was registered to Orthopedics Aviation Service, and piloted by 59 year old Dr. Michael McCarty, of Grand Island. His passengers were 65 year old Wayne Weiss, 65, and his wife, Rosalee 62, also of Grand Island. All died in the crash.

The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board went to the scene to survey the crash site and to investigate exactly what happened.

If you or a loved one have been injured in a plane crash Omaha, please call the Omaha auto accident attorneys of Harris & Associates at (402) 397-1200 or contact us online today. We can help you review your compensation options and ensure you are receiving the compensation you deserve.