SCORES of volunteers took to the roads last night to make sure ambulances and blood transfusions could reach the hospital.

More than 200 residents turned out to push the vehicles up the hill to Salisbury District Hospital when they faced becoming stuck in the snow.

One, Ricky Ball, left his house at about 9pm when he saw a post on Facebook about emergency vehicles being stranded on Odstock Hill.

He joined other community-spirited residents helping search and rescue teams to shovel snow and spread salt and grid to make the road safer.

Ricky, a 38-year-old window cleaner, said it was "terribly bad", and raised concerns that the road had not been salted during the day. 

But Wiltshire Council said the road had been gritted during the day yesterday, and again between 7pm and 9pm last night. 

The lifelong Salisbury resident even helped push an ambulance carrying a woman in labour, while others gritted the road in front of it.

"Everybody was all hands on deck," he said. "That was my good deed for the day.

"There were people giving out shovels, and others giving out gloves and blankets.

"The community over Harnham just came out of their doors and helped.

"All the residents were coming out.

"It was a good evening of good work".

Dean Speer, of Britford Lane, was also out helping and said traffic was backed up all along the Southampton Road and round the ring road because cars couldn’t get up the hill along New Bridge Road.

He said: “It does make you question what the local authority was doing to keep this major route leading to the hospital open?

“With no sign of the Police or council gritters, people just got stuck in to help out and it was great  to see the community coming together with ‘blitz spirit’ to do their bit.”

Craig Elsdon, operations manager at Salisbury-based disaster response charity Serve On, said:“Yesterday was just spontaneous, we happened to be there and to be stuck like everyone else."

He added: “It wasn’t an official task but the guys and girls just got stuck in.

“We spent from 6pm to 10pm last night pushing cars out. We have got a load of snow shovels, grit and salt and put that on the road.

“We were basically trying to keep the road open for the ambualnces and clear the traffic so they could get to the hospital.”

Volunteers also helped stranded vehicles at the hospital hill.

Craig said: "What was amazing was the amount of locals that turned up to help. There was only two of us that were doing it because we were stuck anyway."

The Serve On team have already been out today as Craig explains: “We are already out and having a look around to see if there is anyone stuck."

The operations team will be looking at possibly mobilising a team.