Mayor Ward Stamer said his community of Barriere has a first responder society with a vehicle that can respond when BC Ambulance Service cannot, but they are not allowed to transport patients to hospital. He said that needs to change as the community faces gaps in service that mean first responders may not be available when someone calls 911. On Sunday, Stamer told CTV News that the family is indigenous and the baby was eight months old. He also said local officials are not regularly informed about ambulance staffing issues and stressed that he did not want to speculate on whether response time was a factor in the child’s death. There is usually one ambulance in Barriere and two in Clearwater, about 60 kilometers north, but they are shared across the region, Stamer said. “From what I understand, there was only one car for all of Kamloops that Thursday night, and that’s why they took ours,” he said. The service doesn’t tell local government when the Barriere-based ambulance will be diverted until later, Stamer said. The president of the union representing BC paramedics told CTV News Sunday the call came in Thursday night about an infant in cardiac arrest in the Barriere area, about a 45-minute drive north of Kamloops. Troy Clifford described the situation as a “worst case scenario”. He said the ambulance that would normally serve the area was located in Kamloops, helping cover a staffing shortage there. “I’m not sure of the exact location, but I understand it was near Kamloops when the call came in,” Clifford said. “This is absolutely tragic in this situation that we didn’t have an ambulance available for someone at the time they needed it.”
“WE ALL HAVE STORIES LIKE THIS”
Stamer also described a situation about two weeks ago when a woman in Barriere suffered a stroke when ambulance service was not immediately available. The woman’s daughter was pulled over by RCMP for speeding while taking her mother to hospital in Kamloops, about 66 kilometers away, and the Mounties ended up accompanying them, he said. “We all have stories like that,” he said of rural communities across B.C In two recent cases, residents of Ashcroft, BC—another small town in the interior—died while waiting for ambulance service.
On August 14, a man went into cardiac arrest just 200 meters from the community’s ambulance station, but the nearest staffed ambulance did not arrive for 29 minutes, according to Ashcroft Mayor Barbara Roden. The man did not survive.
Four weeks prior to this incident, an Ashcroft senior died of cardiac arrest at a time when the local emergency room was closed due to staff shortages and an available ambulance was in another community. Stamer said there is a “higher level of stress” in Barriere, as residents don’t know what level of ambulance service might be available on a given day. “Should we prepare our residents, like an evacuation notice, so you have a full tank of gas so you can throw somebody in the pickup and drive them around town? That’s kind of how we are sometimes,” he said. Stammer said he and other mayors from communities in BC’s Interior are discussing coming together at the Association of BC Municipalities meeting next month to try to get the ear of provincial authorities. “We’re not trying to point fingers here and we’re not blaming anyone,” he said. “We just want to be able to sit down and see if we can have a constructive meeting, to see if we can come up with some short-term solutions to the problems that we all face in these communities.” BC Emergency Health Services said it is reviewing the circumstances of the “heartbreaking loss.” He said the nearest available ambulance was dispatched immediately, and local firefighters were also called to assist with the call. However, Stammer noted that firefighters are currently not allowed to transport patients. A statement from BC Emergency Health Services said its “deepest condolences to the family and community.” With files from CTV News Vancouver
