Death on English Bay; critics look again to closed Kits base

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Could a life have been saved this week if the feds hadn’t closed the Kitsilano Coast Guard base two months ago?

Critics are asking that very question after a man working on a cargo ship near Stanley Park died of a heart attack yesterday afternoon.

It took a Coast Guard crew more than 20 minutes to arrive from Richmond, a time the Canadian Coast Guard says is acceptable. It took another 40 minutes for paramedics to get there.

Bill Tieleman speaks for the Union of Canadian Transportation Employees. He says it would’ve been less than a 10-minute trip from the old base. “You could see the freighter where the man had a heart attack from the Kitsilano Coast Guard base.”

“It was literally less than 10 minutes [from that base], so you could have had emergency personnel there in a much faster response time. You could have ambulance and paramedics there in a much faster response time.”

“When some either falls into… very cold waters or has a medical distress like this situation, 15 minutes is a lifetime. It’s an enormous amount of time to delay, and that’s one of the reasons why we say the Richmond-Sea Island hovercraft base is too far away,” adds Tieleman.

The old Kitsilano station responded to about 350 calls per year.

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