Retired EMS worker Brian Winter shares on the state of Alberta’s EMS system
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, I speak with Councillor Corey Kuchar about the lack of ambulance service in Cochrane, Alberta, and his efforts to fix it. We discuss the issues that citizens of Cochran are facing and how they are working together to fix them.
Transcript
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ambulances hit another crisis level firefighters are waiting for hours for ambulance service
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um things are getting really really dangerous out there with this shortage of uh ems coverage
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right now and you've been working i guess to address that uh in cochran uh yes uh corey i'm
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a retired paramedic at times over 30 years and uh last um august uh there was a public meeting held
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at the cochran legion organized by another um retired paramedic just to let the citizens of
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cochran know that there's there's issues with the current ambulance system run by the province
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we had about 80 people in attendance and from that 80 people uh we have formed a cochran ems citizen
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action group uh and we have we have 14 members uh where we meet uh corey uh twice a month we have
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an agenda we develop terms of reference and what we're trying to do uh corey is just let the citizens
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know that uh there are issues and uh we had an open house or we had a booth at the annual
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uh a chamber of commerce trade show this weekend uh and um we had uh 268 people sign a petition uh
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currently uh before the trade show we had about uh 2300 names uh that uh members of our group have
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gone door to door uh and now we've got uh roughly uh about 2350 3360 signatures uh and uh we're meeting
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with our mla uh peter gunthry um next tuesday evening uh to present the petition to him and he's agreed
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to take it to the health minister uh and basically uh we as a action group corey figured that there are
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three simple ways that we can actually fix the system uh number one is that our emergency crews are
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doing non-emergency transfers uh into calgary uh would which is taking our current unit into the calgary
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system and once they get in there corey they're waiting in the hospital for four five six hours
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uh our another crew is doing another transfer and then we're left with no units protecting cochrane
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so when someone calls uh for a medical emergency uh the units could be coming from anywhere in southern
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alberta they could be coming from banff they could be coming from canmore they could be coming from
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didsbury uh and to us it's just not acceptable so number one what we've said is that let's farm out
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the non-emergency transfers to another alternate source whether that's private uh or whether
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the ahs step up and put more transfer units there we don't really care we just want to keep our
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emergency ambulances in cochrane number two is hospital wait times
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uh this is just an issue you can go into any particular hospital and see five six eight ten
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ambulances lined up uh and they've got their patients in the hallway uh where uh these uh paramedics are
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basically looking after a patient until there's a vat available uh number two is or number three uh corey
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is flexing uh our crew uh starts uh at a shift in calgary and they're flexed anywhere in southern
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alberta they're going to uh oles they're going to didsbury uh and uh which is again keeping our
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emergency crews uh away from cochrane so we have come up with three simple plans and that's what our
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our petition is about uh if and these these could be fixed very easily uh so if they took our our
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particular three points uh and applied them uh it would keep our units in cochrane yeah and what i
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appreciate what you're up to is is again you're not coming from an ideology the bottom line is you just
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want to get more ambulances available to people when they need them that's the thing as you said whether
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it's public whether it's private it doesn't really matter the bottom line is is there's under service
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right now and it has to change and you've pointed out three ways that that can be improved um i'd like
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to get back to the broader policy issues in a few minutes but something else impressed me you're
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working on a proactive thing in that you're accepting though that there's going to be slow service
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and response times for a while so working on preparing people at least to be able to uh just
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people themselves to empower themselves to respond to emergencies and perhaps stabilize people and and
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save their lives until an ems officer can get there can you expand a bit on that yeah basically
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at our booth we had on the weekend we said if you know the unit's going to be delayed for whatever
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length of time do you have a plan b uh and we had uh information there in first aid courses we had
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information there on cpr courses and we also distributed the amount of aeds that are in cochrane
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currently we have 20 aeds located through cochrane uh and just to give you an example uh cory last
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september a 70 year old golfer collapsed at the ninth hole in cochrane uh he went down there happened
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to be residents uh that back onto the golf course uh they went out and performed cpr the aed was uh retrieved
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from the lobby of the uh of the golf club and he was revived before ems arrived because they were
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delayed uh and currently uh right now uh we're holding uh two um uh uh charity golf tournaments one in
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calgary uh next week or sorry next month and one in uh cochrane uh next september and all the proceeds
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are going toward more aeds in cochrane uh since we started our campaign a local service group uh cory
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has agreed to donate twenty thousand dollars to purchase to purchase more aeds in cochrane so if
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we get 10 or 15 000 from these charity golf tournaments put it with the 20 we'll have 35 000
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that we can purchase and increase the number of aeds in cochrane and we want them registered
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so if a particular person is calling and saying that uh the uh an individual has collapsed there's
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no pulse no heartbeat the dispatcher will say hey you do you know you have an aed uh within a block or
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two blocks or whatever the situation is uh and um in this particular case uh the gentleman the 70 year
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old gentleman uh is out currently uh golfing but he was clinically dead uh before uh an aed was used
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the last september yeah and just to expand a bit for people who aren't familiar so an aed is a
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kind of a portable layperson's defibrillator unit and and i've i got taught on those in uh occupational
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for aid in the past they're quite user friendly and safe uh but you know not everybody necessarily
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knows what those are and we're seeing more and more of them but the more we can see out there the
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better of course because you never know where or when you're going to need one oh exactly and they're
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they're basically foolproof you're turning the thing on it actually talks you through how to use
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it uh and if the person has a pulse uh it will basically say stop and evaluate the patient
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um so it requires a bit of instructions but anybody can use them uh and there's some maintenance that's
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required uh with respect to the pads and the batteries uh and but basically they're uh they're sort
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of a foolproof thing um and and it the aeds uh is what really saves the patient uh cpr will keep the
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blood flowing uh but aeds is what happens when you shock the the heart to get the heart back into some
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type of rhythm yeah so and there were other things you'd mentioned uh as i kind of talked about there's
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first aid courses people could take uh down in the urban areas but we're seeing it everywhere too keeping
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naloxone handy uh epinephrine even i mean there's there's items that need immediate intervention with
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people that laid people could actually apply if they just had a little of the knowledge and resources in
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order to do it uh you know just assuming that you're going to have a longer time for an ems arrival
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well that's correct you know it's sort of a band-aid effect uh until we can resolve the ems crisis in
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cochran and alberta uh but um we're encouraging the residents of cochran and area uh to make sure
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that they have a current cpr a current first aid course they know what an aed is uh and in fact
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two members of our 14 member committee have already purchased personal aeds uh they run roughly about
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fourteen fifteen hundred dollars uh depending on where you buy them from uh so they have taken
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upon themselves to purchase aeds for their own personal family yeah so uh you know moving away
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from that and like i said i just like that at least you know it's uh being uh pragmatic i mean we just
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there's a bigger issue to be addressed and it's not saying we can kick the can down the road for ems
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response times it's just saying hey as citizens there's lots of things you can do to protect yourself in
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the meantime even if we fix the ems response time issue somehow it'd be good to have that many more
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uh resources and people trained on them uh if they should ever need them so getting back to that
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though i mean it's particularly acute with with rural uh services though i mean cochran could barely
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be called rural these days it seems to be actually mostly anything that's nearby a large center like
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calgary i live in prittis our ambulance gets pulled into the city all the time uh this has been new
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i mean since what was it during else it's delmec's time i believe when they sort of centralized all the
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uh ems services wasn't it yeah basically uh we ran in cochran the ambulance service started on july 1st
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1983. uh i actually uh was a paramedic in calgary came out to cochran in the early 80s i took the title
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of fire chief because i was with the fire department and then in july 1st 83 we started our own service
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uh and then the province uh for whatever means decided to take over the service in 2009 uh and
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ever since then uh it's gone downhill um in 2009 before we took the ambulance service over we had
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two first line response units in 2022 with the population of cochran close to 35 000 people triple
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we still have 2000 we still have two units um so it really hasn't come up uh kept up with the uh with
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the population growth and the amount of calls that we've got um and so if if the government would do
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our three simple steps it's a start on trying to keep our units in cochran and rather having a unit
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coming uh there's been situations where our cars started from vulcan coming to cochran for whatever
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instant uh luckily there were cars that cleared from that closest hospital but can you imagine
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having a car coming from vulcan if you've got a heart attack or a stroke or whatever it's just it's
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not acceptable corey no and then it's it's not just the long runs but it's something you've referenced
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earlier too whether it was inpatient transfer or other things but when they get to those larger
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hospitals they can often be locked in and doing hallway care i wrote a column on this last uh summer and i
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i drove by and checked out the rocky view just randomly and pulled in and went out back and
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and sure enough there were i counted nine ambulances all parked behind there and presumably all of the
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attendants were stuck inside at the hospital that should be out and about somewhere i mean ready or
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possibly in the middle of providing services but then it gets into a kind of a larger uh more complicated
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issue because then uh it comes down to the health care itself and and uh you know uh hospital staff
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signing off on taking patients right yeah exactly and and uh we we've been told uh that it's if you go
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ahead and drop off a patient at a hospital it's called abandonment but we're not abandoning them in the
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in a jungle somewhere we're taking them to a first class hospital in a in a particular urban setting
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um and the problem is is that they're downloading the the uh the availability of the for us to look after or the
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paramedics look after the the patients we brought in because they're short-staffed uh when we ran the
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service in cochran if you spent more than 15 minutes at the hospital you were too long uh if you're a
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paramedic attending you would give your report to the tree archoners she would tell you what bed you
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would need your partner would get the ambulance ready and within 15 minutes we're gone but now in 2009
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uh corey the uh the paramedics are part of the ahs staff so i don't know they they think they can
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download the the availability of the patients to the paramedics which is absolutely wrong in fact
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i think it's criminal i think it's criminal that they're holding hostage the the the paramedics at
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at a hospital where they should be out in their area and for us it should be back in cochran
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well yeah i mean it's a waste of specially trained skill sets i mean they're specially trained people
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in hospital for caring for patients once they come in uh an ems attendant a paramedic i mean
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they've got the training and the ability to be out and about that's the point that's the purpose
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they should be in the field and and either you know taking part in a transfer or stabilizing
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something out there and we're just completely misappropriating a resource when we're using them
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as as care personnel in in hospital hallways well that's right and they're using the paramedic staff
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as you want to say in quotations babysitting uh uh now if you bring it if you walk into the hospital
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uh you have there's a clock there saying your particular time to look at get looked at could
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be two or three or four hours uh but the the only difference is that we're bringing somebody in by
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ambulance if it's critical they probably will get a bed if it's not critical they'll say go to the
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hallway and wait until your turn comes up well why can't we put the that particular patient in the
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waiter room as if he walked in but no we uh the uh the system won't allow us to do that cory
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yeah so there's i mean there's trouble on a lot of fronts i mean i we've i've been screaming this one
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from the rooftops for a while as we know we both know don sharp and he's a great guy and he's
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yeah brought my attention to it i went to meetings down in okotoks that he was helping host and uh
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it just seems once in a while we'll have a a tragedy and this will hit the news and everybody
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gets upset and then they all forget about it but this problem just isn't going away uh but at least
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you're making a two-fold approach one with at least well let's see how we as citizens can get up and
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help each other and and help mitigate the the damage but at the same time we've got to change this
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this system all together because it's just not working it's it's got to start at the top and and
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look in an air degree was that last month they transported two patients by fire truck to their
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urgent care in air degree because there was no ambulances available um and the city of calgary as
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mentioned in the herald last week i think a crew stayed with the patient for three hours waiting for
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an ambulance well that takes that particular fire crew out of service it's not fair it's not fair at
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all no and again it's a different train i mean the fire crews are trained to respond to medical
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emergencies but they're also trained to put out fires i mean if there'd have been a large fire
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emergency that they could be delayed it goes all the way down the line it it does uh so um it's it's a
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it's a it's a system it's a system failure uh but we we got to start somewhere so our 14
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volunteer committee is very committed uh like i say we had a part of our crew went out and collected
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almost 2500 signatures based on our three-point plan uh that's going to be meeting with our mla
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next tuesday and he has promised to take that to the minister uh and you know those 2500 signatures
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that could be five or ten or eight or twelve percent of the voting public for that particular mla
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that's got to make a difference corey absolutely well i really appreciate you coming on to talk
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to us and i appreciate the work you're doing i mean all we can do is keep trying and keep hammering on
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it and reminding them and and hopefully eventually we'll get a positive change where can people find
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more information on what you're doing out in cochran and uh you know perhaps helping out or taking part
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yeah uh if we have a a facebook page if they go to a cochran uh uh ems uh citizen action group uh
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you'll pick up our facebook page or we're keep we're trying to keep the residents of cochran
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updated uh of uh you know of success of success stories plus failures uh and to let them know what's
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happening in in the community of cochran um there are other community groups around uh there's airdrie
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there's ocotox there's bamf there's canmore uh and they can go to those particular websites as well
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or facebook pages to see what's happening in their community