Town hall meeting held to discuss use, misuse of local ambulances

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A town hall was held on Aug. 12 at the Strathmore Legion, which invited local residents to discuss ambulance services and how they are currently being utilized. 

Don Sharpe, who helped to organize the forum and who spoke at the town hall, said he believes there is a problem with ambulances that are supposed to be serving the rural communities surrounding Calgary, being called into the city major instead.

“A large urban center surrounded by smaller centers is not a new phenomenon, and mutual aid agreements are not a new phenomenon. We’ve always been helping each other out long before the days AHS took over,” he said. 

Sharpe referred to a currently existing Mutual Aid agreement between municipalities orbiting Calgary, and AHS. 

The agreement states that in times of a red alert, meaning that when no local ambulances are available to respond to a call, trucks and paramedics may be called in from municipalities surrounding the city, such as Airdrie, Strathmore, Okotoks and Cochrane.

“There is no agreement that can survive what’s happening right now,” said Sharpe. “The idea that every single day, Calgary sucks all of the rural ambulances into the city to do calls and leaves the rural communities without ambulance services for hours … there’s no way that’s acceptable.” 

Through the mutual aid agreement, there is argument to be made that if necessary, rural communities should be able to rely on ambulance services from Calgary as a fallback plan, but according to Sharpe, that’s something that simply doesn’t happen.

Sharpe advocates that ambulances designated to serve rural areas should remain in said rural areas instead of being called away, potentially for the entire day.

“We’ve got a pile of evidence from people who’ve been hurt by a long response – from firefighters who’ve had to wait on scene for an ambulance for hours, from doctors who’ve had to wait in clinics for an ambulance to arrive,” he said. “Calgary is just not able to support the rural communities anymore, yet still expects the rural communities to support Calgary, and enough is enough.”

According to data Sharpe said was obtained via FOIP channels, throughout 2020, there were over 3,000 Red Alerts in Calgary, which are instances where no ambulance is available to respond to a call.

“That’s nine Red Alerts a day, and that’s after they’ve sucked in all of the available resources from all the small communities around the city,” he said. “The situation is dire, it’s a crisis, it’s unsustainable, and we’re saying to the rural residents, [they’ve] helped Calgary for years, maybe it’s time to say ‘no.’”

Through the town hall in Strathmore, as well as similar events held in Airdrie, Okotoks, and Cochrane, Sharpe suggested to residents that they form Citizen Action Groups in each respective municipality and work together to ensure their local ambulances stay available locally.

“[If] you want an ambulance in your community to serve you when you need it, you better do something,” he said. “Even if we put 10 ambulances on duty tomorrow and staffed them with qualified paramedics, what if those 10 ambulances took patients to the hospital and got stuck in the hallway?”

Sharpe referred to what is called hallway waits, which are instances when paramedics monitor a patient in a hospital hallway until a bed is available to treat the patient, potentially for hours on end instead of being back on the road.

Strathmore’s was the third such town hall of the four planned meetings. The final of which will be held in Airdrie on Aug. 13.