Injured forestry workers face emergency response delays in rural B.C.: ombudsman
VICTORIA — Esko Saarinen says he was freezing, shaking, bleeding and in shock.
The forestry worker’s left leg was crushed in a tree-felling accident on Haida Gwaii off British Columbia’s north coast and he remembers co-workers covering him in blankets, telling him to hang on, help was coming.
Saarinen said it took five hours via two separate boats and a bumpy ride on a mechanic’s truck to get him to the nearest hospital at Queen Charlotte City, which would have taken 20 minutes in a helicopter. He then waited another six hours for an air ambulance flight to a hospital in Vancouver, where doctors amputated his left leg below the knee.
Saarinen’s case was among those highlighted Wednesday by the province’s forest safety ombudsman, who said injured workers wait too long for air ambulances.