Paramedics in British Columbia are warning people living in the province’s most populous region to prepare for the impact of unmanned ambulances over the weekend.
In a statement on social media early Saturday morning, the union warned that “many” of the Lower Mainland’s advanced life support units had “sat empty” overnight. In Maple Ridge, a town of about 90,000 people, BC EMS paramedics said there were no ambulances on Saturday.
“We urge the public to be aware that there may be significant service delays and to use 911 when someone’s health or safety is at risk, to use 811 when unsure,” union president Troy Clifford wrote, adding that the situation is indicative of a crisis in the province that “seems to have no end”.
A particularly disturbing example of the effect of this understaffing was brought to light in the Ashcroft internal affairs community. This week, for the second time in less than a month, a resident of the village died while waiting for an ambulance to respond – prompting the mayor to raise the alarm again.
“I’d like to tell you that this is isolated to Ashcroft, but it’s not,” Clifford told CTV News after that incident.
“We just don’t have enough paramedics to fill the slots. The system does not handle the insecure call pattern.”
Clifford says Ashcroft will typically have two ambulances: a full-time primary response unit and a secondary ambulance that relies on on-call staff. However, according to him, the second one is rarely staffed anymore because there are not enough paramedics, and even the first ambulance is not always staffed.
He added that it’s a strain other communities feel, and tragic cases like these also take a heavy toll on first responders.
“The moppers and the dispatchers just want to do their jobs,” he said. “These are all system failures.”
Ambulance paramedics responded to a record number of calls in 2021 as the combined public health emergency of COVID-19 and the toxic drug crisis continued to challenge understaffed crews. In addition, extreme weather events such as a deadly heat dome, raging wildfires and catastrophic flooding have added pressure on the system and its workers, who Clifford and the union have repeatedly said are buckling under the pressure.
“Every corner of British Columbia is suffering from unprecedented staffing, recruitment and retention issues. We do not have enough paramedics and dispatchers to respond to the volume of calls and demand for services,” said a statement posted on the union’s website in June this year.
“We’ve never seen our ability to respond to patients in their time of need be in such jeopardy.”
With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Maria Weisgarber
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