SUNDRE – The municipality has officially taken a stance in solidarity with its counterparts from the Town of Ponoka, whose mayor wrote a letter to the provincial health minister expressing grievous concerns about firefighters increasingly filling the gap in the struggling ambulatory service.
The decision was made on Nov. 28 by way of motion during a regular meeting of council when the item came up as part of the agenda package’s correspondence.
The letter dated Nov. 23 and signed by Ponoka’s mayor, Kevin Ferguson, who addressed Health Minister Jason Copping and also carbon copied Premier Danielle Smith as well as Opposition leader Rachel Notley among others, outlines his municipality’s concerns by way of recounting harrowing experiences.
“I think I could be writing on behalf of most volunteer fire departments in rural Alberta,” reads a portion of the introduction in Ferguson’s letter.
Ferguson goes on to express concerns that stem primarily from the current state the province’s ambulance service following years of neglect.
“This is something that isn’t new,” he wrote. “It has been brewing for a number of years now and I believe we are about to hit critical mass.”
Ponoka’s mayor went on to express fears that by extension, the ripple effect will impact and cause further downstream damage to all emergency services.
As an example, he cited events that unfolded on Nov. 21 when a pedestrian in Ponoka was struck by a motor vehicle.
He recounted how the first responders to arrive at the scene were firefighters who called for an ambulance that was dispatched from Bashaw, some 30 minutes away.
But 10 minutes later, that ambulance was rerouted to Red Deer. By then, the next available ambulance was dispatched from Leduc; a roughly 42-minute response.
“In the meantime, the patient was seizing and his heartbeat had dropped to 28 beats per minute,” Ferguson said. “At that time, rather than continue to wait for an ambulance and lose the patient, our firefighters made the decision to pack him into the box of one of their pickups, and with a police escort got him to our local hospital.”
The mayor added that was merely a brief summary of the report he had read.
“The complete absurdity of this situation, I find astounding,” he said, adding that only two months prior in September, a shooting occurred in downtown Ponoka.
“Once again, our volunteer firefighters were first on the scene because an ambulance had to be dispatched out of Red Deer, about 45 minutes away.”
During that lengthy wait, the volunteer fire department’s members bandaged and stabilized the victim, he said.
“In the last year, our volunteer fire department has been the first to arrive on the scene of a medical event 18 times.”
As members of rural fire departments are community-minded individuals who are primarily motivated by a calling to serve rather than be compensated, a financial payout is not what they’re after, said Ferguson.
“I would say for them, money is not the issue. What is the issue, is that after they have been faced with the trauma of a catastrophic medical event, they then have to go back to their real jobs the following day,” he said.
“While we are trying to somehow figure our way around this ambulance crisis, we are doing it on the backs of our rural volunteer firefighters,” Ferguson asserted, adding that he is personally seeing friends, neighbours, and fellow citizens placed at risk every day “because we can’t figure this ambulance thing out.”
During the Sundre council’s Nov. 28 meeting, Coun. Owen Petersen wanted to go a step farther than merely accepting Ferguson’s letter as information to be filed away for the records.
“This letter was pretty powerful, I feel. And as outlined in our departmental reports, it is increasingly obvious that our volunteer firefighters are responding to a lot of medical situations,” he said.
“This just pulled on my heart strings and I definitely think we need to pressure the provincial government for funding, because it’s falling on the backs of municipalities.”
Peteresen ended up making a motion directing administration to write a letter of support in solidarity with the Town of Ponoka, which carried unanimously.
