Friday. August 24

$90 - Nortn Shore News - 3

Friday night lifesavers

Ambulance
crews wait

for trouble

on the busiest
night of the
week

T'S 5:30 p.m. on a re-

cent’ Friday afternoon.

As North Shore
residents inch their) way
home through = rash-hourc
traffic across) the Lions
Gate and Second Narrows
bridges, North Vancouver
B.C. Ambulance Service
station crews located at
Lions Gate Hospital are

changing shifts.

By Surj Rattan
News Reporter

North Vancouver unit chief
Tim Jones and partner Richard
Foster ure settling in for a regular
(4-hour tour of duty.

Because it's a Friday, Jones and
Foster, who on this night will man
a paramedic unil, are expecting a
busy night.

Before the shift is over, Jones
says he and Foster will likely res-
pond to at fJeast one ‘canyon
call,’ an incident) whieh has
become all too frequent for
Jones’s team and the North Van-
couver District Fire Department.

A canyon call, in ambulance at-
tendant jargon, refers to a rescue
call made to North Vancouver's
Lynn Canyon park.

It will likely involve someone
who has gone past the park's
posted safety boundaries, climbed
up a rock cliff and been injured
after diving into one of Lynn
Creek’s many natural, but treach-
erous, pools.

Later in the shift, at around 1
am. or 2 a.m., after the bars
have closed, Jones and Foster will
likely end up responding to a
motor vehicle accident somewhere
on the North Shore.

It all adds up to another routine
Friday night for the paramedics.

And this particular night will
contain its share of tragedy.

Between 5:30 p.m. Friday and
2:30 a.m. Saturday, Jones and
Foster will end up responding to
only three calls: while two of them
are minor, the third one will be a
fatality.

Tonight there will be two
“cars’’ based in North Vancouver,
which consist of the paramedic
unit and a three-team ambulance
unit from Vancouver, one unit
based in West Vancouver and one
at the Second Narrows Bridge.

If the West Vancouver unit
receives a call, Jones and Foster
will be put on “standby” at the
corner of the Upper Levels High-
way and Westview Drive.

They will handle any other cails
that might come in from West
Vancouver. Once the West Van-
couver unit is done with its call,
Jones and Foster will return to
their North Vancouver base.

“The B.C, Ambulance Service
has no boundaries,’’ Jones says.
“We could have eight cars in
North Vancouver if we needed to.
if we have a canyon call, we'll
send two ambulances to that, and
we'll bring in two ambulances
from Vancouver to handle our
street calls."

There are three types of
emergency calls to which the
North Vancouver ambulance unit
will typically respond: the ‘street
call, which is usually a call for
assistance from a residence; a
canyon call; and a ‘tmountain
call," where ambulance attendants
will be dispatched to Iecal North

Shore
rescue
hikers.

The North Vancouver unit
primarily covers the North Shore
from Deep Cove to Horseshoe
Bay, but it will also respond to
emergency calls from Whistler and
attend motor vehicle accidents
along the Squamish Highway.

Jones says Friday nights are
traditionally bad ones for the am-
bulance service.

“On Friday nights we have a
higher frequency of alcohol-
related accidents. The Friday
nights are the traditional nights
where we have major accidents,”
he says.

The first call for Jones and
Foster on this night comes in at
6:56 p.m. from the Cedarview
Lodge Intermediate Care Facility
in Lynn Valley, where an elderly
woman is reportedly suffering a
cardiac arrest.

The cardiac arrest turns out to
be a false alarm, but Jones and
his team decide to transport the
woman to Lions Gate Hospital to
be examined by a doctor,

“She had a non-specific type of
chest pain that went into her ab-

as part of a
lost skiers or

mountains
team for

Fae Ge OPT

domen. It was a very vague pain
and she has no prior history,”
Jones says on the ride back to
LGH.

He adds that during the last
year calls to the North Vancouver
unit have increased dramaticaily.
The ambulance unit, says Jones,
works very closely with both the
North Vancouver City and District
fire departments.

**When we have a call we try to
get the first responders out there
as soon as possible, particularly
the fire departments who do an
excellent job. Once the essentials
have been done, our job is to
make sure the patient receives the
hecessary medical treatment,”’
says Jones. who adds that the
ambulance attendants are con-
stantly in contact with an LGH
doctor to receive advice on how to
treat the patient.

The advanced life support
paramedic unit Jones is driving on
this night is equipped with a
defibrillator, which is a device us-
ed to jump-start a patient's heart
and a ‘‘drug box"? which contains
30 types of drugs and tubes.

The second call for Jones and
Foster is received at 12:08 a.m. on

TIM JONES,
North Van-
couver unit
chief of the B.C.
Ambulance
Service, (above)
explains to
News reporter
Surj Rattan the
different
emergency
items in the
paramedic am-
bulance unit.
Left, North
Vancouver am-
bulance atten-
dants Tim
Jones (left) and
Richard Foster
are put on
standby at the
southwest cor-
ner of the Upper
Levels Highway
and Westview
Drive while a
West Vancouver
ambulance unit
responds to a
call.

NEWS photos Cindy Goodman

Saturday. A worker at Neptune
Bulk Terminals has fallen through
an open manhole into a rail car
hopper and has been buried by a
load of urea crystals.

There is mass confusion and a
lot of yelling when Jones and
Foster arrive at the scene. Nep-
tune workers with shovels are in
the hopper and frantically attempt
to dig the injured man out.

Several North Vancouver City
firefighters arrive and climb into
the hopper to help dig out the vic-
tim. Once his head is above the
crystals, Jones climbs into the
hopper in a bid to restore the 45-
year-old man's breathing.

As the confusion continues,
Jones calmly looks up from the
bottom of the hopper and asks.
‘Where's the captain?’

The fire department captain
steps forward to the edge of the
hopper and Jones, after making
eye contact with the other am-
bulance attendants, holds up four
fingers: It’s a code four, the man
has died.

“How are we going to get him
our?,”? Jones asks.

The captain decides the victim
will be pulled up with a rope.

“In a situation like that, where
there’s a lot of confusion, you
just have to find the captain and
ask him how it’s (rescue) going to
be done.”* Jones says afterwards,
as he wipes the drug box clean of
urea at LGH.

Once the victim is pulled from
the hopper, Jones and Foster,
along with three other ambulance
attendants from Vancouver, use
the defibritlator to work on the
victim. Jones says in a situation
where several of the man’s friends
and colleagues are present, it is
important to show them that
everything possible was done to
save their friend’s life. The victim
is pronounced dead on arrival at
LGH.

Dr. Frank Thompson, who on
this night is working as the ‘base
doctor’ at LGH, climbs into the
ambulance and officially pro-
nounces the man dead.

Thompson, who works closely
with the ambulance attendants,
handles all emergency calls at the
hospital this night.

A paramedic’s stress level is ex-
tremely high,

See Stress page &