It’s the children’s frankness that has been left with paramedics Melanie Lowe and Jeff Aucoin.
The couple picked up children whose parents had been murdered in Portapique, NS, on the night of April 18, 2020.
The children were probably in a state of shock and still could not fully understand what had just happened to them while they were in the ambulance, the first perpetrators recalled on Monday in a public hearing of the Mass Accident Commission in Dartmouth, NS.
Two boys had witnessed the death of their parents, realized that the gunman was trying to set fire to his house and escaped to the house of a neighbor where they hid with their two friends whose mother had been killed in the grass in front.
“The kids didn’t hold back, everything they saw, heard, said … Their voices were quiet. It was surreal, really. Having my kids, I’m sure they empathize with these kids,” Aucoin said. , an advanced. Amherst-based paramedic.
Lowe, a primary care paramedic, said “nothing a child should ever see, hear or experience.”
Aucoin, a paramedic, told the commission that he and his co-workers did not know the seriousness of the situation when they arrived in Portapique. (Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press)
“And I think I have a harder time now than I did then.”
A group of four lifeguards from the Health Emergency Services (EHS) spoke openly about how it was during the mass shooting that left 22 people dead, including a pregnant woman, and how it changed the way they approach their work.
They also said their employer, EHS, did not do enough to support them later or review their response to prepare for future emergencies.
Twenty-two people died on April 18 and 19, 2020. Top row from left: Gina Goulet, Dawn Gulenchyn, Jolene Oliver, Frank Gulenchyn, Sean McLeod, Alanna Jenkins. Second row: John Zahl, Lisa McCully, Joey Webber, Heidi Stevenson, Heather O’Brien and Jamie Blair. Third row from above: Kristen Beaton, Lillian Campbell, Joanne Thomas, Peter Bond, Tom Bagley and Greg Blair. Bottom row: Emily Tuck, Joy Bond, Corrie Ellison and Aaron Tuck. (CBC)
Aucoin said he and Lowe, the second team of paramedics sent, realized they were close to danger only after approaching a site on Portapique Beach Road. They could see four fires on the horizon and had little information from the police or their dispatchers about what was happening.
RCMP officers put the patient in the ambulance and knocked on the door and told them to leave.
“Obviously we were too close, we should never have been sent there, but we didn’t know,” Aucoin said, adding that normally when police call for an ambulance it is considered safe to continue.
Paramedic Melanie Lowe testified Monday. He said he had taken children whose parents had been murdered. (Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press)
“They just wanted to get these people out and get out as soon as possible. But at the same time, I think we put ourselves in a dangerous position where we should never have been. ., without weapons “.
They parked further away, but it turned out that it was close to the gunman’s escape route. Aucoin said that when they realized the shooter could walk, they felt like “sitting ducks” and decided to move again.
It was only after their turn was over and they woke up the next day that they knew the full extent of the loss.
“I just went to bed thinking it was an isolated incident, and then I woke up between 19 and 20 people dead,” Aucoin said.
“These could have been us, right. We had no idea … when I realized it was mobile and it impacted me a lot.”
I didn’t know about the replica cruise
Bruce Cox, an advanced medical dispatcher who worked the next morning, was also part of the panel. He explained that even though they answered calls, including those of people who were discovering bodies, they did not know how to warn callers or their colleagues about a gunman disguised as Mountie.
He said the best thing they could do was warn people to leave the scenes and go home.
“We had no idea this was going on during our shift,” he said.
“Our job is to get information from the callers and then pass it on to lifeguards, paramedics, anyone, so they know what they’re dealing with. And they didn’t give it to us. [it,] very very little “.
Cox is an advanced emergency medical suspatcher and an intermediate care paramedic. (Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press)
After a 911 operator interrupted a call to say people should not leave the house even in response to a police indication, Cox said he and other dispatchers began to understand what was going on. At the time, they did not know if there was a real RCMP officer.
They generally do not have access to social media at work and it was only after their son sent them a text message with pictures of a burning cruiser that he began to realize the seriousness of the situation.
He later learned that someone from the RCMP had told his manager, but they had insisted that the information could not be shared, Cox said.
‘Too bad, so sad’
Jesse Brine, a primary care paramedic who was part of the first team to respond to Portapique, said he did not know at all what happened until it was updated on news coverage before the his turn began the next night, April 19th.
He said he was ready while answering a call in another small community that night and that the feeling has not gone away.
“My senses increased and I was really looking around the corner, knowing my surroundings. I notice that I do it more often now than before,” Brine said.
While other agencies quit people immediately to give them time to process, Brine said the EHS mentality was “too bad, so sad, basically.”
All of the first responders said they received calls from peer support team members, colleagues who volunteered to sign up. But they said they were not trained psychologists and that an information session held about a month later was also short-lived.
“At the end of the day, where was the support? Where was the attention? I just felt like we were left alone,” Aucoin said.
Brine, a primary care assistant, was in the first ambulance to arrive in Portapique on April 18th. He went back to work the next night. (Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press)
Without professional help
Brine also said that better care and a briefing with other agencies could have helped some colleagues who were struggling and had never returned to work.
Leaders also said EHS should take more steps to learn from the response to prepare for future critical incidents.
They would like to see active shooter training and consider a better team. They told the commission that they hoped that sharing their perspective publicly would lead to some change.
“If it were to happen again tomorrow, I don’t see what would be different from our perspective, from the perspective of the field, unless things are happening behind the scenes of which we are completely unaware,” Cox said.
Lowe said he had never heard of his employer’s internal committee providing information to the investigation.
EHS said in a statement to CBC News that “based on in – depth reviews of [its] own internal processes “has made changes including the expansion of a team preparing for emergencies and training with other agencies.
He said he is working to review some policies and now has a draft plan to relieve employees of their duties in some cases.
EHS Operations also said it wanted to express gratitude to the employees who spoke to the commission.
“We recognize the many things we continue to learn about how we could have supported them more fully since that unexpected event,” the statement said.