Campbell River fire crews were called all around the city on Saturday, responding to everything from medical calls to a structure fire.
“It was a pretty busy day for crews all across the city here,” said chief Thomas Doherty. “We were running around most of the day, assisting BC Ambulance with a number of medical issues and overdose calls. In addition to that, we had a call to the hospital for alarms early in the morning in one of the rooms.”
The crews were busy with medical assistance calls through the morning, including some overdose responses and one cardiac arrest.
“We were on the one medical call, which was a cardiac arrest, then we had a second medical call that we had to send another crew to because Ambulance was delayed responding from Cumberland. Then when we were wrapping up, when the first road rescue came in,” Doherty explained.
That road rescue was for a car that had gone off the road on Highway 28 near Campbell Lake. The driver was still inside the vehicle when crews arrived. They provided first aid until the ambulance came. As soon as that incident was finished, another call for a road rescue on the same stretch of highway, this time past the turn off to the Strathcona Dam, came in. Crews responded to a truck that had rolled over along the highway.
“Crews didn’t have to use the jaws to extricate, but remained on the scene to deal with a fuel spill there as well,” Doherty said.
The day ended with a call for a structure fire on the 400 block of Hilchey Road. A pot of grease on a camp stove located on the back deck of a home had caught fire, alerting the occupants of the home. The fire had spread to one of the exterior walls, but crews were able to extinguish it before any permanent damage was caused.
“Fortunately one of the daughters was still in the house and saw the glow on the back deck caused by the fire spreading up the wall,” he said.
“It happens that we get these stints of busy times,” Doherty added. “There certainly seems to be an uptick in overdose calls lately. As we know that’s an ongoing issue and it seems to be getting worse and worse… There were a lot of things going on.”
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