View Royal fire chief frustrated after overdose call delays fire response

A View Royal firetruck is shown. (CTV News)

A Vancouver Island fire chief is frustrated after his crews where delayed in responding to an apartment fire because they were dispatched to an overdose call.

The fire on Monday night sent two people to hospital for smoke inhalation, displaced four people, and happened next door to the View Royal public safety building.

View Royal Fire Rescue Chief Paul Hurst says it should have taken 30 seconds to respond to the fire, instead of the three minutes that it did.

"We were at another call, they were dealing with yet again another opioid overdose in View Royal at one of our regular homes we go to on a regular basis," said Hurst.

The fire chief says every minute is crucial in his line of work and believes there aren’t enough ambulances on island roads, which is putting people at risk.

"Just a perfect storm," he said. "The guys are tied up dealing with an opioid overdose and residents of View Royal houses are on fire."

View Royal Fire Rescue opts into the province-wide Frist Response Program, which automatically notifies the department of all emergency health calls in its area.

"We’re seeing more and more delays that [firefighters are] waiting for patients because of our shortage of ambulances," said Troy Clifford, provincial president of the Ambulance Paramedics and Dispatchers of BC union.

The union claims the B.C. ministry of health called for a review of benchmark response times in urban centres almost two years ago.

"Unfortunately that has not been completed in metro and urban centres which is key to determining what resource levels we need for communities like Victoria," said Clifford.

A spokesperson with B.C. Emergency Health Services (BCEHS) says they continually review measures to ensure the organization is meeting its benchmark response times.

But the union disagrees.

"In 90 per cent of the time you must make it to the highest acuity calls – the purple, reds, the heart attacks, the shorten of breath, the overdoses – in 8.95 minutes in those geographical areas, and we know that’s not happening in many urban areas like Victoria," said Clifford.

Statics from BCEHS show the number of purple and red-coded patient events it has responded to between 2020 and 2022 has increased by 21.5 per cent.

The emergency service also says it is meeting its response time for the highest priority calls for urban and metro areas of under nine minutes.

The ministry of health says BCEHS was fully staffed in the capital region the night of the View Royal fire, and it hasn’t been seeing the staffing shortage it struggled with during the pandemic.

BCEHS says it continues to work closely with the ministry of health and the Provincial Health Services Authority on five-year modelling to ensure it has sufficient resources to meet the service demands of all communities in British Columbia.

Still, Hurst says more needs to be done.

"It just shows the increasing pressure on our B.C. ambulance and B.C. firefighters when we have firefighters doing ambulance work when they should be doing firefighting work," said Hurst.