First responders come through on second day

BY ANDY BLATCHFORD

andy.blatchford@transcontinental.ca

West Island firefighters had worn their first-responder hats for little more than a day when they helped save a life.

On June 12, firefighters from Ile Bizard’s Station 56 were first to reach a Ste. Geneviève home, where a man had suffered a deep laceration on his arm and was bleeding profusely. “Our firefighter first responders arrived quickly, controlled the bleeding and stabilized him until the ambulance arrived,” Montreal Fire Service Division Chief Richard Liebmann said.

The 911 call came in at 1:03 p.m. and local first responders were on the scene in four minutes.

Urgences Santé paramedics arrived around 13 minutes later to further stabilize the man and transport him to hospital, he added. “It really was a very good example of the utility of first responders on one of the first days that they were in service,” Liebmann said. “Most importantly, they (firefighters) would have never been sent to the call before this Monday morning (June 11), unless there was a rescue involved.”

Firefighters are now trained in skills such as oxygen therapy and monitoring for shock in accident victims.

Liebmann said the Ste. Geneviève man had a “severe incision” on the inside of his forearm — from his wrist to his elbow. “He cut his arm open with an ‘X-Acto’ knife while he was doing some work on his pool,” he said.

Since June 11, all 15 of Montreal’s western fire stations are staffed with first responders.

Officials hope support from community fire departments will save lives in the sprawling, low-density West Island suburbs, where ambulance response times

are high.

The cities of Pointe Claire, Beaconsfield, Kirkland and Dollard des Ormeaux have had first responders for years, but now the whole region is blanketed.

First-responder training is underway in other areas of Montreal, and the city aims to cover the entire island by the end of 2007. “We’ve got 66 stations across the Island of Montreal, so there’s a strong probability that we’re closer (to accident scenes) and that’s exactly the point of tiered responsibility,” Liebmann said.