Prince George crash witness gives failing grade to paramedics

Source: Prince George Citizen

BRITISH COLUMBIA - A Prince George man who was on the scene of a fatal motor vehicle crash near McLeod Lake on Tuesday says he's less than impressed with the performance of the paramedics who were on the scene.

From taking a long time to show up, to not moving fast enough and effectively enough once they arrived, Brad Russell alleged plenty of problems with the way they acted.

"It was like Tom and Jerry," he said.

Russell and his partner in a floor and carpet-laying business were on their way back to Prince George from a job in Mackenzie when they arrived on the scene on Highway 97 North about 20 km south of McLeod where there was a head-on collision between two cars.

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Among the first to arrive on the scene, they found the occupant of one car, a 26-year-old Port Moody man, had escaped without serious injury and Russell let him sit in his truck to keep warm.

But the occupant of the other car, a 24-year-old Prince George woman, was in much more serious strife as she was coughing up blood and could not get out because her arm was pinned under the dash board.

Russell, who holds a level one first aid ticket and has held as high as level three in the past, and his partner pulled her out of the car and took measures to make her comfortable. It was a judgment call, he said, because moving her would risk paralysis.

"It was a catch-22," he said. "We pulled her out because she was in more harm than good."

Meanwhile, another man had called 911 on his cellphone and the wait for rescue personnel to arrive was on. Russell, who arrived at the scene at 2:20 p.m., claimed the paramedics did not show up until after 4 p.m., far too long even for the road conditions.

And once there, Russell said they were disorganized and slow and estimates it took them 45 minutes to get the victim into the ambulance for the trip back to Mackenzie hospital.

What's more, Russell claimed they parked the vehicle the wrong way and an onlooker hopped in an turned it around so the back door was facing onto the collision scene.

All told, Russell estimated it took five hours from the time of the crash to get her to the hospital, by which time she had been declared dead.

"To me it seemed like it was a trainee paramedic and one who had just finished her training that was trying to figure out what to do," he said. "They spent more time trying to put on goggles and take goggles out of packages to put over their eyes than looking after this lady who was in a world of hurt."

He also claimed RCMP on the scene were upset with the paramedics' slow going.

"The first officer there was quite irate," Russell said. "I've never heard an RCMP officer swear and he was at the point where this was a gong show."

B.C. Ambulance Service spokeswoman Chris Harbord said it took the paramedics 73 minutes to reach the scene from Mackenzie and spent six minutes treating on scene, before taking another 73 minutes to drive back. The drive to usually takes an hour, but road conditions slowed the trip, Harbord added.

As for paramedics' conduct on the scene, Harbord said: "They're trained to be calm. They're supposed to come on scene and do an assessment and work with the responders who are there already, so what someone may have seen as not hustling, it might have been more of them just trying to assess the situation and calmly respond to the situation."

However, Russell remains adamant they were simply too slow.

"I guarantee you it wasn't six minutes," he said. "It was a lot longer."

As of Thursday morning Russell had not made a formal complaint to the B.C. Ambulance Service, but he did make his concerns known to RCMP North District traffic services Const. Madonna Saunderson when she was interviewing witnesses on Wednesday.

Saunderson said she will be forwarding Russell's information to the coroner's office, which is responsible for determining cause of death and what contributing factors there may have been.

The name of the deceased was not released Thursday because not all next of kin had yet been notified, Saunderson said.