Warm weather and a scheduling mix-up made for enhanced training for some northern paramedics in Prince George, Thursday.
"This was very impromptu," said Richard Kennelly, B.C. Ambulance Service's superintendent of the northern B.C. region. An array of emergency vehicles surrounded him in the parking lot of CN Centre, and more than a dozen personnel circled through mock duties and practical exercises.
The paramedics at the event were members of the BCAS District Occupational Safety and Health Committee, a standing force including both unit chiefs and rank-and-file paramedics working side by side. Kennelly said these members came from Fraser Lake, Vanderhoof, Fort St. James, McBride, Valemount, Quesnel, Wells, Bear Lake and Prince George. They come together on occasion for training to take back to their home communities.
"We got bumped from our meeting space where we were going to do some tabletop exercises," said Kennelly. "So we thought, since it's warm enough, why not go outside and touch the stuff we were going to just talk about?"
The centrepiece of the training session was the Medical Support Unit, a super-ambulance capable of caring for a large number of patients at once even though it is not a whole lot larger than a regular medical car.
"It is stationed here in Prince George, but it can be deployed almost anywhere in the region and support all sorts of situations," Kennelly said.
Some recent examples of the MSU's activities include the NT Air hangar fire where it acted as a rehydration station for the firefighters, and the Connaught Inn's hazardous materials scare where it was on site ready to help if a mass contamination occurred.
The vehicle has been all over the northern interior doing this sort of work in the two years it has been here. Kennelly said it gets used on 40 to 50 events per year.
Most of those trained on Thursday had never used the vehicle before so it was a valuable experience for them, and would increase its usefulness wherever it went in the region, said Kennelly. More and different training for this committee is scheduled for today.
