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New data from the City of Calgary shows the fire department is on track to respond to more than 170 per cent more overdose calls this year compared to last.
Fire Chief Steve Dongworth says the increase in overdose calls is part of an overall increase in medical calls that has the department on track to break a record this year.
“I think we’re on pace to be very close to 100,000 calls this year,” said Dongworth.
The trend reflects the changing role of firefighters as these calls account for roughly 50 per cent of all calls, said Dongworth.
And this changing role presents new challenges.
“It inevitably does have an impact on our service performance and the reliability of our units in terms of being where you want them to be to take a call,” said Dongworth.
To address these challenges, Dongworth says the department has done work identifying which calls actually require fire response.
“But at the same time, the capacity we create by doing that is being occupied by the increases in other areas, such as opioid overdoses,” said Dongworth.
The nature of these calls also takes a toll on staff.
“These are difficult calls. We’re meeting with folks who are in difficult spots in their lives and, of course, often they have fatal consequences. So we have to measure that as well,” he said.
He added the department is seeing an increase in the number of members taking leave.
Department looking to province for help
For the department to respond to these challenges, Dongworth says its budget requests to the city will increase significantly. He is also asking the province to help compensate the department for the increase in medical calls, including overdoses.
“We’re in the process of writing to the province again to get some kind of reimbursement for us doing medical calls in general,” said Dongworth. “That would certainly help us because then we wouldn’t need to be going to council for more resources to deal with one of the stressors on our service.”
Maddison McKee, press secretary for Hospital and Surgical Health Services, said in an email to CBC News that while the ministry appreciates the fire department’s support in responding to medical emergencies, it “already receives approximately $300,000 annually through Alberta’s Medical First Response Program, which supports municipalities that voluntarily provide additional medical response services.”
McKee added it is municipalities that determine how to deploy fire resources depending on local needs, “including the extent of their response to medical calls.”
Changing drug supply a factor
Monty Ghosh, an addictions specialist and professor at the University of Calgary and University of Alberta, points to changes in the local drug supply as a possible reason for the uptick in overdoses.
“The drug supply has changed quite a bit from the last year,” he said.
This includes more potent forms of fentanyl mixed with stronger animal tranquilizers, a common mix in street drugs often used to prolong the user’s high.
“So this caused a lot of issues with us in terms of overdose response because people are not responding the same way they typically would to an overdose with the typical amounts of naloxone that we’ve had in the past,” said Ghosh.
And that might contribute to the increase in firefighter calls, said Ghosh.
“When people are resuscitating individuals in the community, they may not be able to get them to where they need to be, so they might call EMS services or fire services to help support them, whereas before we were going to be able to take care of these situations and cases ourselves.”