B.C. paramedic says people are waiting hours in sweltering heat for help after calling 911
'This is how it looks when the system collapses,' says B.C. Ambulance Service worker
A B.C. paramedic says it's hard to wear his uniform with pride knowing that people are waiting for hours in the brutal heat for ambulance services.
B.C. and other parts of the West Coast have been facing extreme heat conditions since last Friday. On Tuesday, the town of Lytton, B.C., set an all-time Canadian record for the third day in a row when it hit 49 C.
Police across the province have reported a dramatic spike of sudden deaths linked to the extreme heat, and paramedics are having a hard time keeping up.
When asked about support for ambulance workers on Wednesday, B.C. Public Health Minister Mike Farnworth said the province hired 200 additional paramedics in the fall, and will be hiring more later in the summer.
Darlene MacKinnon, chief operating officer of B.C. Emergency Health Services, which runs B.C. Ambulance Services, said in an emailed statement they are "continuously monitoring staffing levels and making daily adjustments as needed."
"As well, our managers and supervisors are out in the field supporting our crews and providing much-needed hydration, food and assistance in helping paramedics clear the hospital emergency departments more quickly and efficiently as they work in this challenging weather," she said.
One paramedic in the Lower Mainland says the province has not done enough to address what he calls a "collapse" of the emergency response system. CBC has agreed to withhold his name because he fears reprisals from his employer for speaking out.
Listen: A B.C. paramedic on working during a deadly heatwave:
Here is part of his conversation with As It Happens guest host Nil Köksal.
How would you describe the situation in B.C. right now?
It really feels, from my perspective, that our emergency response system and that end of the health-care system has collapsed. And its cost — it seems like it'll probably be about hundreds of lives by the time they've tallied it up. And it's been really hard on front-line health care staff and everybody with B.C. Ambulance, certainly.
You worked the night shifts, as I understand it, over the weekend. What did you see?
Just a queue of calls holding. I work in an outlying community in the Lower Mainland, and so we often get pulled down into the heart of Vancouver to do calls, and getting sent down there to do calls for elderly people that can't help themselves.
These are calls that have been holding for five or six hours. And when people of that age are sitting [with] their body temperatures ... up near 40 degrees or higher, it's a ticking clock.
If you're able to help one patient, then you're stuck waiting because there's nowhere to hand that patient off, and so then you're off the road for several hours while you wait for the hospital to accept care.
I think what we'll end up seeing is this is probably one of the deadliest natural disasters in probably B.C. history, and it might turn out to be in Canadian history. And it's not like it was a tsunami or an earthquake or a volcano eruption. This is something we predicted and nothing was done about it.
You did get to an elderly woman.... Can you tell us what condition she was in?
Just what you would expect when someone's cooking in a room for I think it was in the realm of five hours. And this isn't someone who didn't have someone check on her. This is someone who lived in a care facility where she had people who were concerned. They saw that she couldn't manage the heat in her very hot room, and called for help, called 911. And five hours later, we show up.
And fortunately we were able to get her cooled down and got her the treatment she needed, so she perked up. But it's it's only a matter of time, in that condition, that it's going to keep deteriorating.
That's not how we want our loved ones to move on from this world. We don't want them to die this way, sweltering in a room by themselves.
Every paramedic I know does it because they want to help people. And when you can't help and you hear what's happening, it it breaks you a little bit inside.- B.C. Ambulance Service paramedic
What kind of stress was the system under before this?
We've been having chronic staff shortages in the Lower Mainland and throughout B.C. Ambulance. It's hard to staff our ambulances efficiently. Our call volumes have been really high and it seems routinely, even prior to the heat wave.
I've responded to calls that have been sitting for six hours, for calls that sometimes turn out to be quite serious.
Six hours on the line at any time is staggering, let alone during a heat wave like this.
It's really hard to work in a system that feels broken. And it's been really hard to kind of wear the uniform in feeling that we've let our patients down in such a big way.
Every paramedic I know does it because they want to help people. And when you can't help and you hear what's happening, it breaks you a little bit inside, and you don't want to go in the next day. But, you know, if you don't, that's just one less resource and it makes the problem worse.
You reached out to one of our colleagues and wrote: "Today, I feel traumatized not by the calls I did last night, but by the calls I didn't do last night. The calls that nobody did last night."
We're all people, too. You know, we're trying to live through this heat wave. And when you're working night shifts, you try to come home and sleep. But, you know, it's pretty hard to sleep in an apartment that's 40 degrees itself. So it seems like your only job is to keep yourself well enough to look after people. And it's really hard to go in day after day and work in a broken system.
You mentioned the lack of official statements — the kind of statements you'd like to to see and hear. When asked about the fatalities, B.C. Premier John Horgan initially said citizens have a "matter of personal responsibility" and that "fatalities are a fact of life." He did, we need to mention, walk back those comments on Twitter. How do you respond, though, to what you've heard so far?
I'm glad that he walked back those comments. I have been a part of the health-care system for a long time and I was very happy with how they managed COVID-19. And then to listen to those comments this morning, I cried because it's so angering to to have people say, and to have your leader say: This just happens and people need to take responsibility.
People who are dying are often people who had people looking out for them. And they did the thing that they're supposed to do. We're told if someone needs help, call 911 and we're coming. And that's what they did, and they died anyways.
I can hear how much you care about your job in your voice and what you've said, but also the fatigue and the sadness. Do you have help? Do you have someone looking out for you or someone you can lean on?
I have an amazingly supportive partner and I have lots of friends in the ambulance service as well as great critical incident stress program a B.C. Ambulance [with referrals] to counsellors and whatnot.
So I look out for my mental health. I do the things that I need to do to recharge. But it seems it's been really difficult over the last few days and it might take a little bit of putting myself first to be able to feel that the last few days are going to be behind me.
Written by Sheena Goodyear with files from CBC News. Interview produced by Sarah Jackson. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
