The couple picked up children whose parents had been killed in Portapique, NS, on the night of April 18, 2020. The children were probably shocked and still could not fully understand what had happened to them as soon as they got into the ambulance, the first correspondents recalled Monday at a public hearing of the Mass Accident Committee in Dartmouth, NS. Two boys who had witnessed the death of their parents, realized that the gunman was trying to set fire to their house and escaped to a neighbor where they hid with their two friends whose mother had been killed in the front grass. “The kids weren’t holding back, what they saw, heard, said … Their voices were calm. It was just surreal, really. Having my own kids, you definitely empathize with these kids,” said Aucoin, an advanced caregiver. based in Amherst.
Lowe, a primary care physician, said: “It was nothing that any child should ever see, hear or experience. Aucoin, a nurse, told the committee that he and his colleagues were unaware of the seriousness of the condition when they arrived in Portapique. (Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press) “And I think I’m having a harder time with that now than I did then.” A team of four EHS staff spoke candidly 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 that their employer, EHS, did not do enough to support them later or reconsider its response to prepare for future emergencies. Twenty-two people died on April 18 and 19, 2020. Top row from left: Gina Gulett, Down Gulensen, Jolene Oliver, Frank Gulencin, Sean McLeod, Alana Jenkins. Second row: John Zahl, Lisa McCully, Joey Webber, Heidi Stevenson, Heather O’Brien and Jamie Blair. Third row from the top: 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 paramedic team 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, telling them to leave. “Obviously we were very close, we should never have been sent there, but we did not know it,” Aucoin said, adding that it is usually considered safe for police to call an ambulance. Nurse Melanie Lowe testifies Monday. It is said that he took children whose parents had been killed. (Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press) “They just wanted to get these people out and safe as soon as possible. But at the same time, I think we were in a position of danger that we should never have been in. “Because we have nothing – not even bulletproof vests, no weapons.” He parked further away, but turned out to be close to the gunman’s escape route. Aucoin said that when they realized that the shooter might be a pedestrian, they felt like “ducks were sitting” and decided to move again. As soon as their shift was over and they woke up the next day they learned the full extent of the loss. “I just went to bed thinking it was an isolated incident and then woke up 19 to 20 dead,” Aucoin said. “It could have been us, right. We had no idea … when I realized he was mobile and he hit me really hard.”

I did not know about the replica cruiser

Bruce Cox, an advanced medical dispatcher working the next morning, was also part of the panel. It was said that even when answering calls, including from people finding corpses, they did not know how to warn callers or colleagues about a gunman disguised as a Mountie. He said the best they could do was warn people to leave the tents and go home. “We had no idea this was happening during our shift,” he said. “Our job is to get information from the callers and then pass it on to correspondents, paramedics, anyone, so they know what they are dealing with. And it was not given to us [it,] very very little “. Cox is an advanced medical emergency sender and paramedic. (Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press) After a 911 pilot interrupted a call – to say people should not leave the house even if he was responding to a police order – Cox said he and other senders began to understand what was happening. At that point, they did not know if a real RCMP officer was involved. They generally do not have access to social media at work and only after his son sent him photos of a burning cruiser did he begin 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 disclosed, 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 fully understand what happened until he was informed of the news coverage before his shift began the following night, April 19. He said he was in a frenzy while answering a call to another small community that night and the feeling has not disappeared. “My senses were high and I was really looking around the corners, knowing my surroundings. I find myself doing this more often now than ever before,” Brine said.
While other agencies evacuated people immediately to give them time to process, Brine said the EHS mentality was “very bad, so sad, basically.” All first responders said they received calls from members of a peer support team, colleagues who volunteered to check in. But they said they were not trained psychologists and an update about a month later also failed. “At the end of the day, where was the support? Where was the care? I just felt like we were alone,” Aucoin said. Brine, a primary care paramedic, was in the first ambulance to arrive in Portapique on April 18. He returned to work the next night. (Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press)

No professional help

Brine also said that better care and information from other agencies may have helped some colleagues who were struggling and never returned to work. Respondents also said the EHS would need to take more steps to learn from the response to prepare for future critical events. They would like to see active sniper training and think of better equipment. They told the committee that they hoped that sharing their perspective publicly would lead to some change. “If it happened again tomorrow, I do not see what would be different from our point of view, from the point of view of the field, unless things are happening behind the scenes that we are completely unaware of,” Cox said. Lowe said she had never heard of her employer’s internal committee providing information to the investigation. EHS said in a statement to CBC News that “based on in-depth reviews of the [its] its own internal procedures ”has made changes, including the expansion of an emergency preparedness team and training with other actors. He said he was working to reform some policies and now has a draft plan to fire workers in some cases. EHS Operations also said it wanted to express its appreciation for the staff who spoke to the committee. “We recognize the many things we continue to learn about how we could support them more fully than that unexpected event,” the statement said.