The April 23 Toronto van attack and its aftermath, which left 10 dead and 16 injured, spurred a grassroots, front-line push from York Region’s first responders to identify best practices in serious emergency situations with mass casualties.
York Region Paramedic Services and York Regional Police held a day-long training session yesterday at their Sharon facility for tactical paramedics across Ontario, who are the first responders charged with handling the most serious threats to public safety such as reports of an active shooter or a bomb call.
The program paired tactical paramedics with officers from police forces across the province as they responded to a variety of make-believe scenarios. The overwhelming sentiment among first responders at the training event was that while York Region hasn’t had a situation such as the van attack, it was a matter of when, not if.
“Nothing prevented that guy from turning right (into York Region) or left,” York Region Paramedic Services Supt. Tait Mitchell said of Alek Minassian, 25, now charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder. “We had tactical operators there, helping. The reality is that day will come.”
Tactical paramedics teams from eight municipalities participated in the first York Region-hosted training, including Toronto, Simcoe, Halton, Peel, Ottawa, Hastings-Quinte, Durham and the far-north Cochrane.
Police forces from Halton, Durham, South Simcoe K9 Unit, Ontario Provincial Police, Peel, Toronto, and the RCMP all partnered with their paramedic counterparts in the learning exercises.
“Day-to-day, it’s regular work for paramedics, but their job can change at a moment’s notice,” Supt. Mitchell said. “There’s a different side to tactical paramedics, the men and women who take on additional risk to protect the public. They are the people who go into situations where regular paramedics don’t go.”
