Mayor Barbara Roden told CTV News Vancouver that a man was walking his dog Sunday morning when he had a heart attack. The man was within sight of the local ambulance station, but the nearest medics were about 30 minutes away. Volunteer firefighters were called, but were not trained in this type of medical response. Roden said firefighters who had some first aid gave the man CPR until medics arrived. “That’s twice in a month now that we’ve had people in medical distress without an ambulance at the station to get them help,” Roden said. “It’s disappointing, it makes me incredibly sad for the family and friends of the deceased, it makes me worry for my community because I know people in the community are worried about this.” Last month, an elderly resident of a care home next to Ashcroft Hospital suffered a cardiac arrest and died. At the time, the emergency department was closed due to staff shortages. “Nobody expects an ambulance parked in their driveway 24-7 in case of a medical emergency, absolutely. But people depend on ambulance service, particularly in rural communities,” Roden said. “We just feel abandoned.” Roden said she wants to see an effort made to hire local people into BC Emergency Health Services. “We’re more likely to get ambulances from rural communities coming to our rural communities to work,” he said. “It’s going to be difficult to attract paramedics from Surrey or White Rock or Richmond or Delta to work in small, rural communities.” Ashcroft’s emergency department has experienced several temporary outages in recent months, driving patients to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, which is about an hour’s drive away. Roden said some people choose to leave communities like Ashcroft because of unreliable health care. “There’s clearly something broken with the model,” he said. With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Angela Jung and Penny Daflos
