SUBMITTED
The aftermath of a head-on vehicle collision that took place on Richmond Avenue East early Thursday morning. The owner of the 2015 Ford Edge was transported to hospital by her husband instead of an ambulance.
A Brandon woman is still recovering from a head-on vehicle collision where an ambulance wasn’t immediately available to transport her to a hospital.
Instead, Karmelle, who declined to give her last name due to privacy concerns, told the Sun that her husband had to pick her up at the accident site Thursday morning and bring her to the Brandon Regional Health Centre for treatment.
"It’s a little frustrating," the 27-year-old told the Sun on Friday. "Because we pay for our health care through our taxes, and you expect it to be there when you need it. And then for it not to be [there], it kind of sucks."
The accident took place around 7:30 a.m., when Karmelle was driving along Richmond Avenue East to attend her out-of-town job located east of Brandon.
Roughly one kilometre west of the Provincial Trunk Highway 110 intersection, a vehicle travelling in the opposite direction at around 90 km/h swerved into the oncoming lane and hit Karmelle’s 2015 Ford Edge head-on.
She is amazed she managed to escape the incident with only cuts and bruises, especially since the entire front part of her vehicle was crushed.
"I got out of my car and I saw my tire in the middle of the road, axel and everything," she said. "My car is completely wrecked."
According to a Shared Health representative, paramedics were on the scene of the accident as part of the primary 911 response, arriving within 11 minutes of the call being made.
Aftercare was offered to both parties involved in the collision and the request for additional paramedic response was cancelled "upon determination that care and transport to hospital were not required."
"Calls are prioritized to ensure high-acuity and trauma patients continue to receive timely care, with our paramedic fleet strategically positioned to ensure all communities have access to emergency services — even if a local unit is temporarily unavailable," the Shared Health representative wrote in an email.
However, Karmelle was still told by first responders that she should call her husband for transport, even though he was currently at home with the couple’s two young children.
After finding someone to watch the kids, Karmelle’s husband arrived at the crash site approximately an hour later at 8:30 a.m.
"It wasn’t until my husband was almost there that they said an ambulance was available to come," Karmelle said. "But then who knows how long it would have been before it actually got there."
The couple faced similar challenges at the BRHC, with staff initially forcing Karmelle to wait with only minor treatment and examination.
It wasn’t until she got the opportunity to see a doctor around 10:40 a.m., and show the physician pictures of her vehicle, that she was finally checked for internal bleeding through an ultrasound machine.
Even though no major injuries were detected, Richard Tower is still angry that no ambulance showed up to transport his daughter in the first place, given how serious the crash was.
While Tower doesn’t blame local first responders for the outcome, he thinks the incident speaks volumes about how health-care resources are being distributed in the Westman region.
"It’s got to be frustrating for the police and for everybody, because it looks bad for EMS guys," he told the Sun on Friday. "In general, they’re all great, but if there’s nobody to go, there’s nobody to go. And that’s an issue where the fault lies with the people running our health-care system."
Thursday’s accident isn’t the only recent example of Brandon residents suffering because of a lack of emergency medical services.
On Jan. 6, 67-year-old Joseph Nault had to wait 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive after he slipped and fell in the Real Canadian Superstore parking lot.
Not wanting to move without the proper medical equipment on hand, Nault told the Sun that he was forced to lie on the ground in -35 C weather, leaving him with water blisters as well as an injured hip.
"Had I gotten into an ambulance in five or 10 minutes, I wouldn’t have experienced much of that or any of that," he said. "I would have been in [the] emergency [room] that much sooner. I never got anything for pain that whole time I was laying there."
In terms of how Karmelle is recovering, the 27-year-old mother told the Sun Friday morning that she is still very sore, with bruises covering her neck, chest, stomach and arms.
However, she remains thankful that she escaped Thursday’s collision without any severe injuries, although the lack of ambulance transport still lingers in the back of her mind.
"I’d like to think that I would get medical help immediately if it was absolutely necessary," she said. "But right from the start they knew there was a head-on collision on the highway, so you think that they would come right away. But you just never know."
The same Shared Health representative told the Sun the organization is exploring options to increase EMS capacity in Brandon.
"In the meantime, we continue to encourage Brandon residents — and all Manitobans — to call 911 if they or someone they know is experiencing a medical emergency," the representative wrote in an email.
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