First Responders Coming To TMR

“He said that if it weren’t for [the first responders], he would have died. Every year since, he has a party to thank them,” said Greenberg who was moved to try pushing the Town to introduce the same program here.

Recently, the Service de sécurité incendie de Montréal and the Association des pompiers de Montréal signed an accord to implement the first-responders service across the island. Claude Dauphin, the Montreal Executive Committee member for public security, said the firefighters’ rapid reaction-time could save from 60 to 90 lives a year. Locally, that would mean four or five saved lives, Greenberg said.

Starting this April, the service will be introduced to the West Island and the island’s eastern tip – remote areas with already long ambulance wait-times. Then other central area will receive it gradually by 2009. In TMR, training will begin next January with the start of services beginning March 24, 2008.

Mayor Vera Danyluk, who’s responsible for public security both on the local and Agglomeration level, said the Town is well-served with nearby Urgences-santé vehicles that can usually arrive within several minutes. Until first responders come next year, TMR will have Public Security personnel train on portable defibrillators. “We’ll try to fill in the gap for the rest of the year.”

Before the merger came into effect in 2001, the Town was working to implement the service. When the local Fire Department didn’t want to take responsibility for it, plans were made for Public Security to take it on. However, it was so close to the merger and the Montreal Fire Department and its union wanted to wait and look more closely at it.

The delay was very disappointing for citizens such as Lew Greenberg. Now that it’s finally coming about, he’s quite glad that people elsewhere on the island and eventually in TMR. “It’s the best thing that could happen to anybody because of the many lives that it could save.”