In the third of a series of interviews leading up to the October 15 election, Area C candidate Robyn Mawhinney describes some of the challenges emergency services face on Quadra Island.
“Every month on Quadra Island, there are multiple days where there are no paramedics available, as well as no after hours emergency ferry,” she explained.
While BC Emergency Health Services is pretty tight lipped about the shortage, Mawhinney has friends who are paramedics and learned of whole weekends when there are no paramedics available.
“I have a friend who had an emergency in the woods. When he called 911, they told him that they couldn’t come and get him. He’d have to find his own way to the hospital. I don’t have a stat on how many days, I think it probably changes every month, but it’s definitely a significant number of days,” said Mawhinney.
Cortes Island was facing a critical shortage of paramedics last year, but the situation appears to have resolved after Emergency Services increased the number of scheduled on-call paramedics to four.
Mawhinney described a different scenario on Quadra:
“What I understand about the paramedic situation on Quadra Island is that there are some very wonderful individuals who have homes here and have chosen paramedic as their employment, but the number of folks that live on the island does not meet the need for paramedics on the island. We need folks from off island to come here and support us.”
“It really circles back to the housing issue because there could be more paramedics on Quadra if housing was more affordable, but it’s not. People that live on a paramedic salary are probably not gonna be able to afford to live here.”
While finding housing will not solve all the problems in the BC ambulance service, Mawhinney said this is one component that the Regional Director and Quadra Island community ‘can work towards.’
The housing crisis is also impacting ferry service between Quadra Island and Campbell River. At the June 15 SRD meeting the current regional director, Jim Abram, said BC Ferries was not able to find accommodation for the crews that would man the new hybrid electric ferries meant to operate between Quadra Island and Campbell River. There is also a petition with 2,265 signatures on change.org calling for a restoration of after hour emergency services to transport ambulances to Campbell River. It states that this was available for 40 years, but recently cancelled.
“The housing crisis, if you wanna call it that, or the housing situation is playing a big role in our after hours ferry availability as well because, the folks that do work for ferries are often able to be called out to an overnight emergency, but they have rules about how many hours they have to have off before they can work again,” explained Mawhinney.
“So if there aren’t enough ferry employees that are on the island, it’s gonna affect the scheduling for the next day and keeping our ferry running. Then they’re not going to be able to do a call out at two in the morning.”
A month or so ago, one of Quadra’s paramedics posted a warning, for people having late night health issues at night, on Facebook. She advised them not to wait and see if their situation improves. Catch the last ferry to Campbell River. It was not certain that the ferry will respond to a 2 AM call, and they might end up waiting in an ambulance until the first ferry at 6 AM.
“That is a pretty significant message from one of our local health providers,” said Mawhinney.
The other emergency services she is concerned about is wildfire.
“With climate change, forest fires are a growing concern on islands that are covered in trees. I’m grateful that our emergency services are really focused on fire smart and teaching folks, how to FireSmart, their yards and their homes so that hopefully we can be more protected from wildfire,” she said.
She added, “The Quadra Island fire service only serves the South Island. It’s been really great meeting with communities up in Granite Bay, Bold Point and northern Quadra Island who are building their own fire brigades to keep their communities safe and having meetings and really working on their fire resilience. I’m grateful that our Northern neighbours and friends are building their own resilience.”
Top image credit: Robyn Mawhinney in front of the Quadra Ambulance building – Photo by Mike Gall
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