Ashcroft Mayor Barbara Rhoden says she was saddened, angry and “beyond disappointed” to hear it took almost 30 minutes for an ambulance to get to a villager who was in medical trouble and died at the scene. Roden said this is the second time in less than a month that a resident has needed emergency medical treatment with paramedics within a half hour. “It’s disappointment, anger, sadness that something like this is happening again. It’s beyond frustrating to see this happen,” Roden said. According to Roden, an Ashcroft man was walking his dog Sunday morning when he collapsed. A neighbor found him and called 911 and was told an ambulance was 35 minutes away. Roden said a similar incident happened just four weeks earlier. In both incidents, the volunteer fire department received a call asking if they could help. “Our volunteer firefighters are not trained as first medical responders. But the fire chief said — as he did in July — that he would basically go in as a private person, to help out, to see what he could do,” Roden said. “He got the AED from the fire department and some other firefighters arrived in their personal vehicles to see if they could help. And they and some neighbors did CPR until the medics arrived.” Roden said it took 29 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. “They’re waiting and waiting for the ambulance. And it’s disappointing that it’s happened again,” he said, adding that he’s now hearing from more people who have experienced long wait times. Roden said she had to call 911 for someone, and while she said it wasn’t an emergency, it took an hour and 10 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. “A lot of people are very scared here in Ashcroft and the surrounding area served by Ashcroft Ambulance Station because people want to know that when they call for these health care services – or if they go to an emergency department – that it will be available for them,” Roden said. BC Emergency Health Services confirmed in a statement that paramedics received a call to respond to a patient in Ashcroft at 8:41 a.m. Sunday. According to BC EHS, the nearest available ambulance was dispatched immediately and local firefighters were also requested to assist. “The ambulance crew arrived at the scene at 9:09 am. to take care of the firefighters at the scene. No patients were transported from the scene,” BC EHS said. BC EHS said it will review the incident “given the longer response time for this type of call.” BC EHS said it has faced staffing challenges but has made “significant changes and investments to improve and stabilize” staff since last year, including adding more than 500 new full- and part-time paramedic positions in rural areas. According to BC EHS, approximately 76 percent of all permanent positions at BC EHS are filled. “We have a strong, national recruitment campaign underway to fill open positions,” said BC EHS. Roden said it’s important for BC EHS to review the incidents, but she also wants to see the agency identify and address the underlying causes of long wait times. He said he would like to see paramedic recruitment efforts focused on rural areas of the province. “If you want paramedics in rural communities, recruit people who are already there, who know that lifestyle, who love rural B.C. … I think that way, you’re going to have a lot more stability in the paramedic service.” Troy Clifford, president of BC Ambulance Paramedics, said BC EHS needs to be held accountable for these types of incidents. “If they haven’t provided the services to these communities that they’re mandated to do, they need to say why and what they’re doing to fix it. And I haven’t seen that,” Clifford said. Clifford said in some cases, paramedics have to leave the community to transport patients, and in those cases, another ambulance would have to cover — which is difficult with ongoing staffing issues. “They’re so short-staffed everywhere that they’re really, in some cases, just relying on luck that nothing’s going to come. And that’s absolutely no way to run an emergency ambulance service,” Clifford said. “We know that heart muscle dies within minutes. So you need CPR and defibrillation within minutes for the best chance of an outcome or resuscitation of this patient. We don’t know what would have happened in that situation, but we never gave him the best chance of survival.”
