Saskatoon’s paramedic service reported Tuesday that it was swamped by an unexpected surge in calls.
MD Ambulance said in a release that it responded to 120 calls over a 24-hour span on Tuesday. That’s nearly twice their normal call volume.
“Normally when we see spikes like that there’s a trend of something happening. But Tuesday we went through our numbers and went through calls, and tried to see if there was some sort of trend out there, and there was nothing,” said spokesperson Troy Davies.
Davies concluded injured and sick people was partially behind the anomaly of calls.
The situation left the company without amublances waiting in reserve for much of the day, according to the release.
The company reported that it had called in all available staff and was leaning on services in rural areas near Saskatoon to help out with minor calls.
The company also warned that inter-hospital patient transfers would face delays.
“A lot of them waited 7 to 8 hours, if not longer. We did what we could to work with the health region to make sure anything that was a stat transfer, we would obviously do.”
Davies reported normal call volumes Wednesday morning.