The fatal pedestrian incident on Sept. 4 had bystanders wondering why an ambulance was so slow in attending the scene.
According to a B.C. Ambulance spokesperson, there were no patient care delays despite a paging failure that night.
Kelsie Carwithen, the media manager with the B.C. Emergency Health Services (BCEHS), reported first responders from Squamish Fire Rescue were on the scene within seven minutes, and 12 minutes later an ambulance arrived. It took 19 minutes for an ambulance to arrive on the scene.
First responders started cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), she wrote in an email message.
“BC Emergency Health Services has investigated this call and our reports show that there were no patient care delays as a result of a single pager outage in Squamish on Sept. 4,” said Carwithen. “BCEHS has backup systems in place to ensure crews are alerted of an incoming call; we do not rely on one telecommunications system.”
According to Carwithen, pagers are reliable and they rarely fail.
“BCEHS dispatchers are electronically alerted of any pages that have not been received and immediately contact the crew member by phone,” Carwithen wrote.
The telephone backup system was used that night when it was discovered the paging system failed.
Paramedic Cameron Eby, the recording secretary with CUPE Local 873, said the pager failure issue is secondary to the BCEHS policy of sending the Squamish first-response car out of town.
“At night, this leaves the community covered by the second car, which responds from their homes on pagers,” said Eby.
“We believe BCAS should do the opposite, they should page the second car to go out of town, while they leave the ready-to-respond car available to the community of Squamish.”
Eby noted that it would cost BCEHS more money to send on-call paramedics out of town, but he said Squamish would have better ambulance service if the community had 24-hour full-time paramedics in town, ready to respond to emergencies.
Carwithen said a technical expert visited Squamish on Sept. 8 to do a full assessment of the pager system. The results of the assessment weren’t available, but Carwithen said the technician would determine if new pagers are needed in Squamish.
The name of the woman who died in the crash hasn’t been released by the B.C. Coroner’s Office. She was reportedly a former Squamish resident who was born in 1953.
