by Hal Newman<\/p>\n
It’s been a long while since \tthis happened however it seems the story continues to have a serious impact \ton those with whom it’s shared.<\/p>\n
\n
And that’s interesting in and \tof itself in that several colleagues have approached me recently because \tthey’ve heard this story presented at conferences by folks other than me \tclaiming it as their own.<\/p>\n
\n
Except, of course, for the \tpart where the presenters accept responsibility for making fateful decisions \tbecause in their telling of my story this happened to ‘someone they know’ or \t‘an unnamed colleague’ and they proceed to dis’ him for his lack of \tknowledge about their community.<\/p>\n
\n
I was actually very familiar \twith the community I served.<\/p>\n
\n
I was the director of Cote \tSaint-Luc EMS in January of 1998. The City of Cote Saint-Luc was an \tinteresting place to lead a team of emergency medical services providers. \tThere was a very high percentage of the population who were 65 years of age \tand older and embedded within that considerable slice was a large community \tof Holocaust survivors.<\/p>\n
\n
Our EMS department was \tinnovative in its outreach efforts and in its expanded scope of service that \tmade it more of a psycho-social service than a purely emergency medical \tservices organization.<\/p>\n
\n
On January 5 the freezing \train storm began to take a toll on the power grid. At 05h00 on the morning \tof January 6th, dispatch began to become inundated with calls for \tassistance. There were reports from Hydro-Quebec that some 700,000 \thouseholds were without power in a large swath of southern Quebec.<\/p>\n
\n
On January 6 we realized \tevacuations were likely to become a necessity. At 11h35 we received the \tfirst of what would be many calls for medical verifications. A 75-year-old \tman was on a home oxygen system and plans were made for his eventual \tevacuation.<\/p>\n
\n
We were sliding further into \tcrisis. Our calls were multiplying while available resources were shrinking. \tPeople were finding it difficult if not impossible to find a hotel room \tanywhere in Montreal.<\/p>\n
\n
From crisis we went directly \tinto the abyss. No need to pass Go. I called for assistance from the \tprovincial government to assist with establishing shelters for the thousands \tof senior citizens and medically fragile residents we were evacuating from \tdark, frigid, carbon-monoxide-intensive apartment buildings.<\/p>\n
\n
You could not measure the \tdepth of my despair when I realized no help was coming. That feeling of \tprofound isolation was almost immediately replaced by the realization that \twe would have to take care of ourselves – no cavalry would be riding over \tthe hill to come to our rescue.<\/p>\n
\n
On January 7 at 10h42 our \tcrews began the assessment of a 10-floor seniors residence. At 10h46 the \ttransport of the first 16 evacuees from the building begins. They taken to a \tshelter established at City Hall. The fire department is called to the scene \tto ventilate the building after fumes from the emergency generators \tcirculate throughout the hallways.<\/p>\n
\n
On January 8, Hydro Quebec \treported 950,000 households are without power.<\/p>\n
\n
I made mistakes.<\/p>\n
\n
We had many senior-centric \thighrise or multi-building facilities that had to be evacuated. Given the \tsheer number of evacuations and the limited humans available to carry out \tthe task, we drafted police officers to assist with these mass evacuations.<\/p>\n
\n
As police officers, many in \ttactical or bulked-up gear due to the extreme weather conditions, went \tdoor-to-door in the darkened hallways, hundreds of Holocaust survivors \tflashed back to a time of forced evacuations and transport to the death \tcamps.<\/p>\n
\n
When bubbies and zaidies* \tscream.<\/p>\n
\n
We had, of course, \tunintentionally made matters worse by providing the police officers with \tinstructions to residents to gather their essentials into a bag as quickly \tas possible and then make their way to the lobby where they would be loaded \tinto buses for the ride to the shelters.<\/p>\n
\n
At the shelters we had the \tstandard line-up check-in procedure. The first round of evacuations resulted \tin dozens of cases of severe mental trauma and more than a few syncopal \tepisodes.<\/p>\n
\n
When the plans failed, we \tadjusted.<\/p>\n
\n
We adjusted by having our \tmedics accompany the police officers on their evacuation rounds, softened \tthe approach, used as much light as could be hauled around, brought social \tworkers into the mix on the buses and altered the check-in procedure to \tinclude large round tables where a social worker and a medic were assigned \tto each table to help residents acclimate to their new surroundings.<\/p>\n
\n
It became more like a \tlast-minute social gathering. Thank goodness.<\/p>\n
\n
On January 10th, Hydro Quebec \treported 1.4 million households without power. Water had to be boiled prior \tto consumption.<\/p>\n
\n
On January 11th, the army \tarrived with more than 11,000 soldiers on the ground. The Abbruzzesse Family \thad power in their kitchen in Montreal North. Huge trays of wonderful \tItalian dishes were transported across the city to feed our crews. Smaller \tarmy. Just as appreciated.<\/p>\n
\n
I remember a satellite phone \tconversation with someone at an agency considering lending us a hand during \tthe disaster. We were evacuating another 100 or so seniors from a nursing \thome at the time. The gentleman on the phone said they might be willing to \tsend someone to better assess the gravity of the situation. Right at that \tmoment a large piece of ice dropped off the top of a 20-floor building and \thit a parked car on the street behind me. There was a large crash. The man \ton the phone exclaimed, ‘What was that?!’<\/p>\n
My reply, ‘Hell just froze over, sir.’<\/p>\n
Be well. Practice big \tmedicine.<\/p>\n
\n
Hal<\/p>\n
\n
*Bubby and Zaidie are the \tyiddush words for Grandmother and Grandfather respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Hal Newman It’s been a long while since this happened however it seems the story continues to have a serious impact on those with whom it’s shared. And that’s interesting in and of itself in that several colleagues have approached me recently because they’ve heard this story presented at conferences by folks other than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[18,17,20,19,21],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigmedicine.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}