It has been an unprecedented busy time for the Town of Hay River's ambulance service, as evidenced by a high number of calls in January.
"We had probably one of the busiest months I've ever seen with ambulance," Ross Potter, the town's director of protective services, told town council during its Feb. 1 online meeting. "We did 66 runs last month and brought in somewhere in the area of about $66,000 worth of revenue doing those calls."
In comments to The Hub, Potter said that over the past six years the previous high number of calls in January was 40 calls in 2019, while there were just 25 calls for that month in 2017.
Potter said that January this year began with 16 ambulance calls in the first two days of the month.
"The first two days most of the calls were all drug and alcohol related," he said. "It was just crazy for those two days right around New Year's."
Throughout January, Potter said that 84 per cent of the calls were after hours or on weekends.
The ambulance service is part of the Hay River Fire Department.
Potter said there are currently around 32 members in the department and about half of them are fully trained to respond with the ambulance service.
"We do have a core of people that do the biggest proportion of the responses," he said, noting that group consists of about 10 people.
Potter said there is a concern that, if the ambulance service remains busy, it will be awfully hard on the responders.
"It's definitely a concern of mine, for sure," he said. "The guys get tired. I definitely know the crew that worked the first two days were dead on their feet by the third day."
It is sometimes so busy that the town's two ambulances could be out on calls at the same time.
"It happens more and more frequently now," said Potter.
The director of protective services and fire chief said the department is working internally to get more people responding to ambulance calls.
"We've got a good crew here," he said. "They're all dedicated and all trying to help the community wherever they can."
As for why there has been such an increase in calls, part of the reason is the need to help homeless people in Hay River.
During the Jan. 25 meeting of council, Glenn Smith, the town's senior administrative officer, said that issue is being looked at.
"Certainly the increases, as I understand it, seem to be from the number of calls associated with some of our homeless population," said Smith. "That's been something that we've been working with other departments on, but it is seeing some stress to our responders."
However, Potter told the Jan. 25 meeting of council that the calls in January were all over the place.
"We picked up on medevacs," he said. "We've also picked up on just general calls for, I would say, drug and alcohol abuse, that type of thing. And the amount of calls that we've had for homeless people has dropped off for this month, but we're keeping busy with just general business at this point in time."
Mayor Kandis Jameson said she has written letters to both the minister of health and social services and the minister responsible for homelessness to request a meeting to discuss the situation.
Speaking last week, Potter said that homelessness affected the number of ambulance calls last year.
"In 2020 that was the case," he said. "For January 2021, there were very few calls for the homeless people."
The situation was likely helped by last year's opening of the Moving Forward Emergency Shelter for Men and Women, plus a day shelter at Soaring Eagle Friendship Centre.
"I think that's got something to do with it," Potter said. "And our protective services specialist is also being very proactive in going around and checking on some of the homeless people to make sure they're all right and that kind of stuff, which is cutting back on runs for the ambulance."
When speaking to The Hub on Feb. 4, Potter said February has not started off being as busy as January, and there had only been two or three calls for the ambulance up to that date.