A paramedic said he was “shocked and appalled” by what he saw on the job during B.C.’s heat wave.
“It was a disaster,” the paramedic, who asked not to be identified, wrote to Global News about his experiences on the front lines on Sunday and Monday.
“I responded to calls numerous hours after they had initially called for help. They were still awake and breathing when they dialled 911. When I arrived, I found patients who had been in cardiac arrest for so long that there was zero chance of survival. We still tried.
“I responded to care homes with multiple patients requiring paramedics. I stopped to check on the other patients in the facility and found them deceased. I couldn’t perform CPR on these patients because there were others who were still alive who needed help just across the hall.”
The paramedic recalled arriving at another scene to find firefighters loading someone who was severely hyperthermic and hypoxic into a taxi.
“They had given up hope of us ever arriving,” he wrote.
The paramedic said the workload was unprecedented.
“We consistently had over 250 calls in the GVRD still waiting to be assigned an ambulance for 18-plus hours at times. The previous record was in 2011 during the Stanley Cup riots with 96 calls holding.”
On Wednesday, the BC Coroners Service said the province had recorded at least 486 sudden, unexplained deaths since Friday — a 195 per cent increase over the number of deaths B.C. would usually see over the same period.
“While its too early to say with certainty how many of these deaths are heat related, it is believed likely that the significant increase in deaths reported is attributable to the extreme weather B.C. has experienced,” Chief Coroner Lisa LaPointe said.
First responders said they could not keep up with the massive volume of people calling for help in recent days.
Vancouver police said Wednesday that they had responded to 98 sudden deaths since Friday, including 53 reported on Tuesday. Two-thirds of the victims were 70 years of age or older, police said.
One person lost their life outside Vancouver Fire Hall No. 5 on Tuesday. A desperate family had brought the person to the fire hall after waiting two hours for an ambulance that never came.
“The person was in a cardiac arrest,” Vancouver Fire Rescue Services Chief Karen Fry said. “Our chief officers performed CPR on that patient and unfortunately, they succumbed to their injuries.”
Health Minister Adrian Dix said the health-care system is under intense pressure amid COVID-19, the overdose crisis, and now a heat wave.
“Every ambulance system is going to be tested by this kind of record day,” Dix said. “It is profound and challenging.”
Terry Lake, CEO of the BC Care Providers Association, noted that the heat wave has been particularly challenging for seniors, and his organization has been ringing the alarm since Friday.
“We knew this was coming,” he said. “We could have been, I think, better prepared. But we should, as we always should, learn from this.”
The Ministry of Health says it will be posting more than 400 positions in July to be filled within B.C.’s Emergency Health Services.
Cooler temperatures are expected over most of B.C. Wednesday and into the rest of the week.
–With files from Amy Judd and Julia Foy