In the face of another heat wave, Metro Vancouver municipalities and the provincial government are mobilizing emergency operations centres and are opening cooling stations to protect B.C.'s most vulnerable people.
A building high-pressure system has prompted Environment Canada to issue 19 heat warnings across British Columbia, blanketing the southern half of the province and reaching as far north as Kitamaat.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said Friday that BC Emergency Health Services (BCEHS) and Emergency Management BC (EMBC) are “all systems go” to help out anyone who is experiencing heat and/or smoke-related challenges.”
Local and provincial governments have faced stiff criticism during a record-breaking “heat dome” that scorched B.C. in June.
On Friday, B.C.’s Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe told Glacier Media 570 deaths have now been attributed to the deadly event, a 300 per cent increase over the previous five-year average. Of those, 79 per cent were 65 years of age and older.
“The older population in the province really suffered the most,” says Lapointe.
At the peak of the heat wave, ambulance drivers tell Glacier Media of patients waiting for up to 15 hours before they were attended to.
“I attended five cardiac arrests in a row. We didn’t see a single one because they were all dead before we arrived,” says one Metro Vancouver ambulance paramedic, who worked south of the Fraser River. For fear of backlash from their employer, Glacier Media is not going to identify the paramedic.
“I didn’t know what I was walking into when I walked into Surrey hospital and saw dead people on the floor, family showing up with dead people in their cars.”
This time around, the province says BCEHS has opened regional emergency operations centres and extra staff have been deployed to help offloading patients at hospitals.
In rural areas, EMBC has opened cooling stations and is working with communities and First Nations to bus people to buildings with water and air conditioning.
In Metro Vancouver, where most of the deaths occurred during the previous heat wave, municipalities have already begun opening cooling centres and misting stations.
New Westminster has already opened two 24-hour cooling centres with a free taxi service as temperatures were expected to reach 34 C Friday.
On the North Shore, director of North Shore Emergency Management Emily Dicken encouraged residents to, “Check on your family, check on your neighbour.”
And in Vancouver, the city has opened 12 cooling centres at a handful of libraries and community centres. Should Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) issue an extreme heat alert, it will extend cooling centre hours, deploy heavy misters on the Downtown Eastside and open up 15 “pop up” spray stations around the city.
According to VCH, an extreme, level 2, heat alert is issued “when the two-day average of high temperatures is predicted to reach 36 C or higher at the Abbotsford Airport and/or is predicted to reach 31 C or higher at the Vancouver airport, based on the temperatures measured at 2 p.m.”
Environment Canada predicts temperatures to fall just short of that threshold.
With files from Jane Seyd and Julie MacLellan
Stefan Labbé is a solutions journalist. That means he covers how people are responding to problems linked to climate change — from housing to energy and everything in between. Have a story idea? Get in touch. Email [email protected].
