No deaths attributed to Ottawa’s heat wave, coroner says
While Montreal’s death toll from the blistering weeklong heat wave that has gripped Quebec and Eastern Ontario reached 18 on Thursday, health officials in Ottawa say the city hasn’t had a single heatrelated death.
Ottawa paramedics responded to 15 heat-related calls on Wednesday, 11 on Tuesday and 20 on the holiday Monday, but they haven’t had an unusual number of death or “vital signs absent” calls since the heat arrived last weekend, said Ottawa Paramedic Service spokesman Marc Antoine Deschamps.
Even figuring out whether an ambulance call is heat-related is difficult, Deschamps said.
“It’s hard to pinpoint the numbers. Some people when they call 911 will say it’s because of the heat and they’re feeling weak and nauseous. That’s fairly easy,” Deschamps said. “But people can be dizzy and nauseous for a number of reasons. They could have the stomach flu, cardiac arrhythmia — it can be really, really hard to tell.”
Dr. Louise McNaughton-Filion, regional supervising coroner, said Thursday there have been no confirmed heat-related deaths in Ottawa.
“Every year the Ontario regional coroners are requested to keep their radar up for any heat-related deaths, particularly during a heat wave,” McNaughton-Filion said. “There have been cases where a concern has been raised as possibly being heat-related, but we have none that are confirmed.”
Nor does Ottawa Public Health receive death reports in real time, said spokeswoman Donna Casey.
“Deaths as they occur are not reported to OPH,” Casey said in an email. “OPH has access to death data from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, however, the data is not recent — the current data OPH has access to is between three to four years old”
That’s not the case in Montreal where front-line caregivers are required to report heat-related deaths. The heat victims in Montreal have all been between the ages of 50 and 80 and were from the segment of the population most vulnerable.
Dr. Mylène Drouin, head of Montreal’s regional health authority, told the Montreal Gazette the city has logged the same jump in ambulance transports as had been recorded during the deadly heat wave of 2010, when more than 100 people died in the Montreal area.
While every death will be investigated, Drouin said, “for the moment, they conform exactly to the characteristics we’ve described — people with chronic illness, mental health problems, people living alone, people living in apartment blocks between four to six storeys and without air conditioning, those living in high heat areas of the city.”