Sask. firefighters are responding to more overdose calls — and it's taking a toll

Joel McNair and his team spring into action the moment the bell rings at the Number 1 fire station in Saskatoon, sliding down the fire pole, jumping onto a fire truck and speeding off to the call.

More often than not these days in the city, firefighters are being called to a drug overdose. A veteran of 22 years, McNair said it wasn't always that way.

"People are openly taking fentanyl. We don't ask them if they've taken heroin. We ask them if they've taken fentanyl," he told host Sam Maciag on the CBC podcast This is Saskatchewan. "The other thing that's happening now is they're putting other drugs in there, which makes it harder for the Narcan." 

McNair said Saskatoon fire crews had responded to 1,088 overdose calls this year, as of May 15. He dug into the archives of his specific station and found that in 2000, they responded to 3,385 calls of any kind during the whole year. As of May 15, Number 1 station had responded to 500 calls more than that (3,885), with more than six months to go.

Saskatchewan's Ministry of Health has issued at least three overdose alerts for Saskatoon so far this year. The most recent came in May after the fire department responded to 30 drug overdoses over three days. Another in February alerted the public to 14 overdoses in 24 hours, and another in March — perhaps the most alarming — to 37 overdoses in 24 hours.

The spike in March was so serious that Saskatoon's only supervised consumption site, Prairie Harm Reduction, closed its doors for almost two weeks to give its exhausted staff a break. During that time, two library branches in Saskatoon also closed, saying staff weren't equipped to deal with the number of overdoses happening in their space.

Things in Regina aren't much better. Firefighters are responding to significantly more overdoses than fire calls.

"My record — if you want to call it a record, if you're keeping track — is four overdoses before lunch, two to the same address for different people," said Tyler Packham, who is president of Regina Professional Fire Fighters L181 and has more than two decades of service under his belt.

McNair and Packham agree the new reality is taking a different kind of toll on fire crews, particularly when it comes to repeat users.

McNair, in recovery himself from alcohol addiction, sees each call as an opportunity for someone to make a change. But not all firefighters are able to see it that way.

"It turns you a little bit hard. It turns you a little bit crass. It turns you a little bit judgmental. It turns you a little bit opinionated at times, and that is not a good place to be," Packham said.

That's where Nick Carleton comes in. He's a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Regina and the lead researcher at the Psychological Trauma and Stress Lab. His work focuses on supporting the mental health of trauma-exposed professionals, including first responders and other public safety personnel, health-care workers, military members and veterans.

Carleton said dispatching firefighters to overdose calls should be an extraordinary, temporary band-aid solution to help overwhelmed ambulances and hospitals, not the norm that it's become.

"In the general population, we might be exposed to five or fewer potentially psychologically traumatic events in our entire lifetime," he said, noting that first responders could be exposed to that many in a day.

"We need to recognize the toll that we are tasking on all of our first responders and we have to do a way better job of supporting them."

Packham said Regina firefighters only have $300 of coverage to see a counsellor or social worker each year. With common rates around $200 per hour, that doesn't go very far.

Carleton suggests first responders get familiar with PSPNET, an online service that provides free, confidential, online cognitive behaviour therapy. As for the opioid crisis, he said all levels of government need to start talking and get invested.

"There is no silver bullet, There's no magic solution here. In many ways we're deploying our first responders to try and navigate poverty at this point," he said. "We're having them try and collectively navigate addiction, which is a huge health related issue and it should be treated as a health-related problem, but it is also associated with difficulties with things like poverty."

At the end of the day, McNair and Packham say that when the bell rings, they always roll. If someone wants to be a firefighter, they'll encourage them while also sharing the realities of the job. They know people rely on them now more than ever.

"It's the greatest job ever," Packham said. "It is, it still is."

This story is from the This is Saskatchewan podcast — your connection to the stories Saskatchewan is talking about. Every week, we cover local issues that matter. Hear the voices that are creating change, shaping policy and fuelling creativity in Saskatchewan.

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