Fear, fatigue weigh down workers on the front lines of Saskatoon's overdose crisis

Jeremy Warren · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 11, 2025 7:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Burnout is simply a precise existent interest these days astatine Fire Station #1 successful downtown Saskatoon.

The occurrence station's cardinal determination connected Idylwyld Drive means its crews are often the ones responding to overdose calls. In caller weeks, they've been engaged arsenic the metropolis grapples with a poisoned cause proviso circulating since February.

For 5 days opening March 1, the Saskatoon Fire Department responded to an mean of 19 overdoses per day. There were 37 overdose calls successful 1 24-hour play past week and the respective caller suspicious deaths mightiness beryllium overdose-related, according to the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA).

Exhaustion is mounting successful astatine Fire Station #1, on with vexation implicit a seemingly insurmountable addiction crisis, said Saskatoon firefighter Jayden Poirier successful an interrogation with Saskatoon Morning.

"We're going to the aforesaid radical aggregate times a day," Poirier said. "We're going to an overdose and the idiosyncratic inactive has a infirmary wristband connected that's dated for that time oregon the time before."

An SHA alert issued connected March 6 said the flood of overdoses bespeak that "an unusually potent and perchance lethal substance is circulating successful the Saskatoon area." The alert described the harmful substance arsenic airy pinkish chunks, acheronian purple chunks oregon other unknown substances.

Poirier said he's recently noticed much signs of burnout among the crews responding to overdoses. Peer enactment is disposable and they bash their champion to cheque successful connected each other, helium said.

"The overwhelming feeling that we get arsenic we're driving successful the occurrence motortruck up and down these streets, going to these calls implicit and implicit again, the overwhelming feeling is radical are dying," Poirier said.

"And it seems nine is OK with that due to the fact that nothing's changing."

Last week, Prairie Harm Reduction on 20th Street West temporarily closed its drop-in centre due to the fact that unit were redeployed into the community. PHR's harmless depletion tract remains open.

Staff were "walking alleys, handing retired naloxone kits, driving astir and trying to find whomever they tin to springiness them to, which besides resulted successful them uncovering radical who person overdosed and needed aesculapian support," said PHR enforcement manager Kayla DeMong successful an interrogation with Saskatoon Morning.

DeMong said the overdoses — much than 230 since Feb. 24 by PHR's number — are happening crossed the metropolis and crossed demographics, not conscionable successful the halfway neighbourhoods oregon to radical surviving connected the streets. She wants the SHA to state a nationalist wellness emergency.

"The strain and the unit that this is putting connected our assemblage organizations and connected our exigency services is not sustainable," DeMong said.

"We are each crumbling due to the fact that we can't support up. It should beryllium [SHA's] occupation astatine this constituent to travel successful and supply immoderate of those resources."

That's besides a interest astatine Fire Station #1. When the occurrence section is tied up with overdose calls, it affects effect times for different emergencies, Poirier said.

"It's not uncommon for each azygous motortruck successful this occurrence hallway to beryllium retired connected antithetic calls truthful it's frustrating due to the fact that there's nary firefighters disposable for a fire," Poirier said.

"If there's different emergency, the trucks are coming from further away."

Free take-home naloxone kits are disposable at more than 450 locations crossed the province.

The SHA said radical who witness an overdose and call 911 are protected by the national Good Samaritan Act, which shields them from simple possession charges erstwhile seeking assistance for themselves oregon others.