An ambulance arrived just 36 minutes after a fatal parachuting accident was reported in the Gimli over the weekend, a Manitoba spokesman for Shared Health said in an email Tuesday.
Jean du He, an experienced 53-year-old paratrooper, was pronounced dead at the scene on Saturday night.
People at the scene at the Gimli Industrial Park called an ambulance at 7:11 p.m., and an ambulance was dispatched about two minutes later. However, the nearest ambulance available at the time was traveling from the area northeast of Selkirk and arrived at the scene at 19:47, Shared Health reported.
The provincial health organization acknowledged that the response time was “significantly longer” than its operational targets.
At the time of the call to 911, an ambulance from the Gimli area was in Erikdale, about an hour away by car, while a second ambulance based in the Gimli area was out of operation, the spokesman said.
Emergency resources were strategically positioned at Interlake using a “flexible deployment approach,” but weekend coverage was stretched in part due to the large number of staff calls, Shared Health said.
Attempts to call in random recruits were unsuccessful.
In a press release Monday, the RCMP said they were called around 7:25 p.m. When officers arrived, they found an inappropriate woman on the ground receiving medical care from others at the scene. An RCMP official began helping and paramedics arrived “within minutes,” police said Monday.
Bob Moroz, president of the Manitoba Association of Health Professionals, which represents 6,500 Manitoba health workers, said in a statement Monday that ambulances in rural areas are currently understaffed by 20 to 25 percent.
“Our hearts are with the family and loved ones affected by this tragic event,” Moroz said in a statement.
The Manitoba Association of Health Professionals says rural ambulances currently do not have enough staff at 20 to 25 percent. (Riley Laichuk / CBC)
The union “renews our call on Shared Health, the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister to tackle the growing shortage of staff now.”
Shared Health says efforts to recruit staff to fill vacancies in emergency services, which have increased over the course of the pandemic, remain a priority across the province.
The organization says a centralized recruitment team has been set up to hire emergency response staff, including paramedics.
Two recruitment coordinators have recently been hired to help with this work.
Shared Health says it is moving to a round-the-clock model of paramedics to reduce the system’s dependence on overtime or call schedules and improve patient care.
He is also working to increase educational capacity for high-demand occupations in emergency services, a Shared Health spokesman said.
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