Wednesday highway crash in Revelstoke led to latest emergency room closure in Merritt: mayor

MERRITT, B.C. — The Nicola Valley Hospital’s emergency department in Merritt was closed overnight Wednesday (July 12) due to a staffing shortage.

While the ER has since re-opened, it wasn’t before Merritt Fire Rescue was called to the hospital to help a woman waiting on the doorstep for care, who then had to be transported by ambulance to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops for treatment.

In response to the ongoing crisis in his community, Merritt Mayor Mike Goetz has penned a strongly-worded letter to Premier David Eby, demanding immediate action on the file, but stopping just short of calling for Health Minister Adrian Dix to resign.

“This will be (closure) number 11 that we have gone down (in 2023),” began Goetz. “The letter that I wrote did not ask for anybody’s resignation. What I said was that, in my professional life, had I done my job like this I would have been summarily fired, several times over. And I will stand by that, and you can summarize that any way you want. I’m still not sure how an accident in Revelstoke can affect a hospital that is almost eight hours away.”