Twelve new state-of-the-art ambulances will soon hit New Zealand roads, thanks to the generosity of Kiwis.

St John volunteer Deborah Allfrey dedicates so much of her time to the organisation that she has only three weekends to herself through to March next year.

Nurses will now be stationed at 111 emergency call centres to answer "non-urgent" calls as part of a wide-ranging shakeup which may also give nurses operating national helplines access to patient records.

A mentally-handicapped man, with the mental age of a 9-year-old, was accidentally strangled to death after becoming entangled in electrical bed wires.

A Greymouth pensioner is stunned after receiving a $1471 bill for an ambulance ride to transfer her partner to Christchurch for surgery which didn’t proceed.

A duck-shooting trip turned to tragedy yesterday after a group of mates were flung from their boat as it capsized on the Waikato River.

A toddler who was badly burned by a pot of hot coffee last year has been reunited with the paramedics who attended to him.

Ryan Lemmens and Ross Tomlinson said their “adrenaline was pumping” when they saved an Auckland family from a burning house last month.

Utah couple Tammy and Richard Barnett were on “the trip of a lifetime to New Zealand” before yesterday’s fatal crash, family say.

An Auckland pedestrian was seriously injured when he was hit by a bus on Queen St yesterday.

A McDonald's restaurant and a chain coffee shop have become temporary ambulance stations in Auckland in a bid to respond quicker to 111 calls.

As 85-year-old Stewart Rundle fell more than 30m down a rocky cliff behind his beachfront home he had one thing on his mind - survival.

Minutes after an inferno ripped across a tinder-dry paddock behind her Christchurch home, Julia Walker thought she was going to die.

Len Darr's 100th birthday celebration unexpectedly healed a lingering regret after his years of volunteer work helping the sick and injured.

Former Dunedin mayor Peter Chin is recovering in hospital after being revived by an Air New Zealand crew shortly after take-off, it has been confirmed.

A passenger sitting in front of a man who suffered a suspected heart attack on a flight from Dunedin to Wellington this morning has praised the crew who resuscitated him.

A passenger who got out of a car after it hit a power pole in Canterbury was electrocuted by fallen power lines, and two others who tried to help were shocked.

A judge has told a disgraced former St John officer who sexually assaulted vulnerable patients in the back of an ambulance that he had no previous good character.

Former Waipukurau ambulance officer Christopher Roger King has been found guilty on all charges by a jury at Napier District Court.

A jury is now considering the fate of an former St John officer accused of sexually assaulting four women in the back of his ambulance.

A former ambulance officer accused of sex crimes has told a court there is "definitely not" any truth to the allegations against him.

Stocky 45-year-old man was charged with male assaults female and assaulting with intent to injure.