{"id":8407,"date":"2025-03-04T18:48:23","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T22:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/?p=8407"},"modified":"2025-03-05T13:54:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T17:54:16","slug":"north-queens-residents-speak-out-about-911-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/2025\/03\/04\/north-queens-residents-speak-out-about-911-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"North Queens residents speak out about 911 problems"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chris Wolfe, chief of the North Queens Fire Association, speaks at a public meeting on Monday evening. (Rick Conrad)<\/p><\/div>\n

When Mya Uhlman\u2019s father needed medical help last August, her mother called 911 and expected her local fire department to respond.<\/span><\/p>\n

They were still waiting 20 minutes later, so Uhlman\u2019s mother called again. The 911 dispatcher told her the North Queens Fire Department was on its way. Uhlman\u2019s parents live less than 10 minutes from the fire hall in West Caledonia.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they never, ever showed up,” Uhlman told QCCR. “She ended up calling a relative that lived close by to be with her because she was by herself. \u00a0\u2026 So when I inquired about it, I was told (North Queens) were never paged.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe ambulance did arrive eventually. It was around 40 minutes before the ambulance did arrive. My father is OK, but it was serious at the time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“When my mother explicity asked for the North Queens Fire Department, they should have automatically been dispatched with no questions asked.”<\/p>\n

Uhlman’s story and others were why Chief Chris Wolfe called a public meeting at the North Queens fire hall in Caledonia on Monday night. <\/span><\/p>\n

About 100 residents, firefighters and other first responders from as far away as Yarmouth met to air their concerns about their local fire departments not being called to medical emergencies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chief Wolfe sounded the alarm on Facebook<\/a> in February after another resident called 911 and the dispatcher didn\u2019t notify Wolfe\u2019s department. Instead, that person was still waiting for an ambulance when Wolfe\u2019s deputy chief found out about it and had 911 page the fire department.<\/span><\/p>\n

Volunteer firefighters around Nova Scotia take medical first responder training. The type of call they can respond to depends on the level their department signs up for. North Queens has 18 people trained to respond to almost any level of medical call.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wolfe said that 111 of 198 of their calls last year were medical emergencies.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy mandate is not to give up until we find a solution to this problem of not being paged for certain calls within our communities, because North Queens residents depend on us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He contacted Queens MLA Kim Masland to help organize the meeting with officials from the Department of Health and Wellness, Emergency Health Services, and Emergency Medical Care, which has the contract to operate ambulance and 911 service in Nova Scotia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Masland, who is also the minister of emergency management, told those at the meeting to be frank with their concerns. And she also told people to continue to contact her and other MLAs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want to make sure that we land where we need to land because what has been happening is not acceptable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Representatives from EHS and Emergency Medical Care explained how the system works and the challenges in deploying the right resources in a timely way.<\/span><\/p>\n

But people like Mya Uhlman wanted to know why their local fire departments wouldn\u2019t be told about a call, especially if the person in distress requested it. A first responder with North Queens also demanded to know why dispatchers would deny that request.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before officials could answer his question, first responders from the Liverpool, Pubnico and Woods Harbour fire departments also spoke up and said the same thing is happening in their areas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jeff Fraser, senior executive director of the emergency health services branch with Nova Scotia\u2019s Department of Health and Wellness, said dispatchers have to follow certain models.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI’m not so sure we should be denying that. I actually didn’t realize that was happening in that manner.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Gordon Peckham, who is the vice-president of operations with EMC, said he didn\u2019t know why that\u2019s happening, but that it shouldn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the meeting, Uhlman said she hopes officials change how and when they notify local fire departments.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn a way it made me feel a little better to know it wasn\u2019t only us. But at the same time, it really made me feel awful \u00a0that this is happening in so many places and so many particularly rural community members are not getting the services they need in a timely fashion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Masland said she believes some progress was made at the meeting.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere were things that were said here tonight that I could see they were raising the eyebrows of people here from EHS. And I think it’s important whenever you have communication that\u2019s when you can start to resolve issues, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re gonna do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Chief Wolfe told QCCR that provincial officials promised to work on some of the issues raised and return in six to eight weeks for another public meeting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe community did well supporting us, showing up. They voiced their concerns. Most of the concerns voiced we were aware of. I\u2019m hoping that EMC will take it seriously and we\u2019ll get things resolved.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou could see the reactions with some of the public talking there that there were things going on that they weren’t even aware of. And I believe that within the next day or two, they’ll be taking those things into consideration and addressing them right away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Listen to the audio version of this story below<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/northqueensfiremeetingmar425.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Mya Uhlman\u2019s father needed medical help last August, her mother called 911 and expected her local fire department to respond. They were still waiting 20 minutes later, so Uhlman\u2019s mother called again. The 911 dispatcher told her the North Queens Fire Department was on its way. Uhlman\u2019s parents live less than 10 minutes from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[2899,2938,2939,358,2944,32,35,2937,124,30,2943,2942,31,2940,2941,29,2058,2936,2945,49,2946],"class_list":["post-8407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-news","category-news-posts","tag-2899","tag-911-calls","tag-911-dispatch","tag-caledonia","tag-chief-chris-wolfe","tag-chris-wolfe","tag-ehs","tag-emc","tag-firefighters","tag-first-responders","tag-gordon-peckham","tag-jeff-fraser","tag-kim-masland","tag-medical-emergency","tag-mya-uhlman","tag-north-queens","tag-north-queens-fire-association","tag-north-queens-fire-hall","tag-public-meeting","tag-queens-county","tag-west-caledonia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8407"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8416,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8407\/revisions\/8416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}