Our Bureau of Investigation compiled and analyzed the average delays between an urgent 9-1-1 call and the arrival of ambulances in the 112 municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants in Quebec, over a period of one year. Result: nearly 85% of them are unable to provide an ambulance in the required time to a person whose life is threatened.
A 27-year-old young woman died of asphyxiation after waiting 22 minutes for the ambulance, in the heart of Montreal. His brother now judges that this delay may have cost him his life.
“Front-line services are like a social safety net. It’s supposed to protect us in the event of the unexpected. But this time, the net had a big hole in it and it failed,” regrets Dany Turcot, Marilyne’s youngest child, who died in July 2018.
Dany Turcot photographed a few meters from the residence of his sister, Marilyne, who died after waiting 22 minutes for the ambulance, in Montreal.
TOMA ICZKOVITS
Our Bureau of Investigation revealed Saturday that nearly 85% of Quebec’s largest municipalities are generally incapable of providing an ambulance in the required time to a citizen whose life is in danger. These delays are observable even in the large centers of Montreal and Quebec.
Blocked trachea
On June 30, 2018, Marilyne Turcot was having dinner with a friend in her apartment in Vieux-Rosemont, when a piece of meat lodged in her trachea, preventing her from breathing.
Marilyne Turcot.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE FAMILY
Quickly, the friend who accompanied him tried maneuvers to unblock his airways, but without success. He dialed 911 at 7:26 p.m. First responders arrive 11 minutes later and paramedics will follow after 22 minutes.
But it was too little, too late. The day after the accident, an examination revealed significant brain damage caused by lack of oxygen. She died a few days later.
“When I read the coroner’s report, I understood that it took a really long time before the ambulance arrived”
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Photo TOMA ICZKOVITS
The coroner, Laurence Sarrazin, concluded that it took 8 minutes for the call to be assigned to an ambulance and 16 minutes more for it to arrive at the correct address. These deadlines “appear to me to be rather long,” she notes.
“I often thought about the ambulance delay. But when it happened, in 2018, we were sad, devastated, and we did not have the energy to go further and take legal action,” says Mr. Turcot.
- Listen to the interview with Jean Gagnon, primary care paramedic at Urgences-santé and representative of the prehospital sector at the federal office of the FSSS-CSN on the microphone of Alexandre Dubé via
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Few ambulances available
According to a document obtained by our Bureau of Investigation, there was on average only 1.2 vehicles available throughout the territory of Montreal and Laval, at the time 911 was called.
Urgences-santé recognizes that the response time was “abnormal”, but does not believe that the low number of vehicles available is to blame. She attributes it rather to a problem in identifying the address by the 911 geolocation system, since it was a recent construction. This is also the explanation that Coroner Sarrazin accepted.
The fact remains that the first respondents were also affected by this address issue… but they arrived in 11 minutes, twice as fast.