Concerns over lack of defibrillators in public spaces after medical emergency at Lonsdale Quay
Posted July 18, 2014 7:59 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
NORTH VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – While defibrillators are now common in many workplaces and hockey arenas, there are still many public places without one.
The potentially life-saving device was nowhere to be found during a recent medical emergency at Lonsdale Quay.
Tim, who’s visiting from Toronto, watched as a man fell at sushi restaurant near the SeaBus terminal.
“It looked like what would have been the man’s wife was standing there and perhaps a daughter was also standing there, who worked with him,” he tells us.
“There was a woman and a gentleman offering him CPR and the woman who was feeling for a pulse said ‘There’s no pulse.’ The gentleman continued compressions until the ambulance got there,” he describes.
He says the ambulance arrived within minutes, “but people were running around frantically, trying to find a defibrillator. They went to all of the stores, and no one had one.”
Tim adds people who saw what happened were irate. “The fact that there wasn’t one around in such a public area — so much traffic — the fact that there wasn’t anything.”
“In a place like that [you should] have one of them available…. very clearly marked, and everyone would know where it was,” he argues.
TransLink says SeaBus does not have a defibrillator, as staff are not trained to operate one however employees have their Level 1 First Aid.
News1130 has yet to hear back from Lonsdale Quay.
