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Call for full-time firefighters after Promontory fire Robert Freeman The Progress The blaze that destroyed a house on Daniel Drive Tuesday has area residents asking whether full-time firefighters are needed to fight fires in Promontory Heights. “We pay a lot of taxes in Chilliwack, and we seem to have more houses burning,” said Daniel Drive resident Ian Moskaluk. “We’re very fortunate we have a guy who lives around the corner who is a paid fireman in Abbotsford who had a hose and a wrench in his truck,” Moskaluk said. He said the neighbour had water on the fire 20 minutes before firefighters from the fire hall in Sardis arrived. “They do a great job and everything,” Moskaluk said about the Chilliwack firefighters, “but if it wasn’t for that guy with a hose and wrench ... it could have been a lot worse.” Fire Chief Rick Ryall said Chilliwack does have full-time firefighters, 24 of them, along with paid-oncall volunteers. And it was the full-time firefighters who arrived first at the Daniel Drive fire – 10 minutes after the call. Continued: FIRE/ p8
Firefighters extinguish a house fire on Daniel Drive in Promontory Heights on Tuesday afternoon. For additional photos and video, go online to www.theprogress.ocm. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
Air ambulance saving lives in the Fraser Valley Robert Freeman The Progress
Simkus, head of the cardiology team at RCH, told The Progress Wednesday. With additional improvements in telecommunications - allowing electrocardiograms to be done en route to the hospital, he said, “we’re hoping to shave off somewhere between half an hour to an hour.” “And that makes a difference.” For years, the BC Ambulance Service has been airlifting trauma patients, but only recently have all the pieces for treating a severe heart attack come together for an air ambulance in the Fraser Valley. It’s not as simple as it sounds. “Basically, it’s the right timing of three different processes that have
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Minutes count when you’re having a heart attack. So the Fraser Health Authority has joined forces with the B.C. Ambulance Service to airlift critical cardiac patients from Chilliwack and Fraser Canyon hospitals to the Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, the region’s top cardiac centre. Driving a patient there by ambulance could take up to two hours or more, if traffic is heavy. A helicopter can get a patient there in under 30 minutes. And during the flight, speciallytrained critical care paramedics
can start treatment while a cardiac team at RCH gets ready to receive the patient. Six patients from the Chilliwack area may already owe their lives to the program, called the STEMI Launch protocol, which started just over a month ago on May 25. STEMI - doctor-speak for a very bad heart attack - stands for ST Elevated Myocardial Infarction. During a STEMI event, blood flow to the heart is blocked, causing serious damage to the heart muscle or even death. The faster the artery is unblocked, the better chance the patient has to recover and spend less time in hospital. “Time is muscle when you’re talking heart attack,” Dr. Gerald
been developing that’s created this opportunity,” Dr. Steve Wheeler, medical director of the program, said. “This is not something you can just do,” he said. “For it to work, all the pieces have to run smoothly.” Air ambulance dispatchers and paramedics developed “skill sets” over the years to treat and identify severe heart attack patients, and technology advanced so ECG “heart tracings” could be transmitted by cellphone. At the hospital end, the cardiac team can now prepare a “cath-lab” where a balloon is used to unblock an artery “remarkably quickly,” Wheeler said. “What these three processes
Harry Mertin
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rfreeman@theprogress.com twitter.com/paperboy2
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have been able to do, instead of things happening in linear time, the processes start happening in parallel,” he said. The timed saved means better outcomes for the patient. It also means ground ambulances are still in Chilliwack ready for emergencies here, and there’s a full complement of nurses at the hospital instead of one traveling to RCH with a patient. The protocol is a “natural extension” of the air ambulance service already in place for trauma victims, Dr. Simkus said. “A heart attack is as time critical as a trauma victim,” he said.
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