– In early October you head up Powell Lake with your brother, who is your only sibling and best friend, to work on a project in your float cabin. Your brother complains about heartburn and how Tums don’t seem to be working, but you both work hard all day, preparing a spot for a wood stove.
You finish late in the afternoon, sit on a couch, plan where the tiles should go. Your brother goes out on the deck to clean some tools while you clean up inside. You hear a bang, but you think he has dropped something. You call out to him, but he doesn’t answer. You rush out on the deck and find him face down, palms up. You turn him over, thinking he has hit his head. He has no pulse, no respiration. You rush back inside, grab your cellphone, call 911, put the dispatcher on speakerphone and start CPR. You’re a trained paramedic, as is your brother, so you know what to do.
You are still doing CPR on your brother 35 minutes later when help arrives. He died almost instantly, but you never give up.
In the days that follow, you are amazed at the overwhelming community support that surrounds you and your family. In the midst of your grief, you reach out for a way to turn the tragedy of your brother’s death into something good, something that will benefit others. Your efforts succeed. In the future, if tragedy strikes again up the lake, emergency personnel will be able to locate the person who needs help.
When Troy Marshall called 911 after his brother, Keane, collapsed on the deck of his cabin, the dispatcher, who was in Victoria, didn’t know where Powell Lake was. “It took about four or five minutes before he even knew that it was Powell River,” said Troy.
After the location was determined, the call was directed to BC Ambulance Services’ Powell River station, but ambulance attendants had no way to get to Troy because the station doesn’t have a boat. They contacted a member of Powell River Search and Rescue, who has a boat and who happened to be home. “He loaded his boat, put it in at Mowat Bay, met the ambulance there,” said Troy. “Then they had to find me.”
Although the location is known as Three Mile Bay, that’s not what it’s called on a map, said Troy. “They searched for like six or seven minutes, because they had no idea which bay I was in. By the time they got to me, it had been 35 minutes of doing CPR.”
There was nothing else Troy could do. “I can’t load him into the boat. He’s over 200 pounds. Plus I would have to stop CPR. You’re stuck. And now, what do you do? How do you deal with this?”
The tragedy brought to light a number of issues involved with emergency response on Powell Lake. Over the years there had been various numbering systems for the hundreds of float cabins that are located on the lake. The RCMP had a system at one time and cabin owners sometimes used their lot numbers. But to emergency services, the numbers didn’t mean anything.
“Everybody is really cognizant that for a long time we’ve been operating in this vacuum,” said Troy. “I think all the emergency services personnel are aware that we’ve got a real situation up there if somebody gets hurt.”
What happened to him could happen to anyone, Troy said. Keane was 48 years old, a non-smoker and non-drinker. A commercial pilot, he had just had an aviation medical checkup a few months before he died. “We were just up there having a fine time, working away and snap, in a second, it all changed,” said Troy. “The more preparation, the better off I would have been. If I could have read them GPS coordinates right off the bat, I would have saved five minutes. Five minutes. That’s a long time when you’re doing CPR and somebody is dying in your arms.”
A meeting with representation from the ambulance service, Canadian Coast Guard, RCMP, Powell River Regional District, the Powell River Regional Emergency Program and Powell River Regional Cabin Owners’ Association was held soon after the celebration of life for Keane.
Ryan Thoms, regional emergency program coordinator, said three main items were identified as a result of the meeting: how do people call for emergency assistance; how do they identify the location; and what means of transport exist. “We could help quite a bit on the first two, particularly on the second, which is where the house numbering system came from,” he said.
Nancy Schmeister, information services coordinator with the regional district, was tasked with mapping lakes in the area and locating cabins. A single number was assigned to each residential Crown land lease or licence and GPS coordinates were determined. There were a total of 345 numbers assigned for Powell, Lois, Dodd and Goat lakes as well as Frog Pond.
Owners all received an information packet that included a number for their cabins and GPS coordinates, as well as a letter from Schmeister explaining the numbering system, a letter explaining why the cabin owners’ association asked the emergency program to undertake the program, a letter from Troy detailing what happened the day his brother died and a cabin emergency plan.
As soon as people step off a dock into a boat or travel on an unpaved road, they are just that much further away from emergency services, said Thoms. “That’s a truism everywhere, but we do need to remind people of that. There will be delay, in the best case scenario, and that’s where emergency preparedness comes in.”
Since not all of Powell Lake has cellphone coverage, the groups are working on improving radio communication. As well, they are working on improving the means of transport. “That’s something that we are going to keep working on,” said Thoms. “Lots of agencies have boats, but again, it’s the coordination that we need to keep working on to get there.”
Joe Mastrodonato, the treasurer of the cabin owners’ association, said he has seen a couple of incidents up the lake in the past where this system would have been beneficial. “Now that we’ve finally gotten it together, I think it’s a great thing that’s happened,” he said. “I was so impressed that it happened really quickly. We talked about it two or three months ago and everything is in place now.”
The association is recommending that cabin owners purchase numbers to put on their floats and that they post the GPS coordinates someplace where they can be easily seen by anyone in a cabin. “It’s highly recommended that they use the system, because you never know when it’s your turn,” said Mastrodonato.
While he hopes the new system will help save lives in the future, Troy also said it wouldn’t have helped Keane. “He had a massive coronary. He died within minutes. He was gone. I know it wouldn’t have made a difference. Five minutes, 10 minutes, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Even the cardiologist told me if they had him at the hospital, they couldn’t have saved him.”
However, with the GPS coordinates on every lot number, whenever anyone has to call for help, emergency service personnel will know exactly where they are, Troy said. “If anything good comes out of Keane’s death, this is it.”
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