Victoria Fire Department no longer responding to less urgent medical calls, including certain overdoses

In a quiet but significant shift, Victoria’s Department has changed what 911 calls it will respond to, now skipping less serious medical emergencies.

Dan Atkinson is the chief of the Victoria Fire Department and says on Jan. 5 of this year the changes were implemented.

“About 90 per cent of the medical aid calls that we were going to, we weren’t actually providing any critical intervention or having a meaningful impact on patient outcomes,” said Atkinson.

In 2018, BC Emergency Health Services changed the way it categorizes emergency calls, moving to the Clinical Response Model based on the urgency and severity of the call.

Purple-level calls are of the highest acuity, then followed by red, orange, yellow, green and blue.

“They still have potential to be life-threatening or damaging to health, but they don’t have the time sensitivity or urgency that a purple-level call would have,” said Victoria’s fire chief.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Victoria Fire’s call volumes have been on the rise, peaking in 2024 with more than 12,000 calls. Many of those were for overdoses fueled by the opioid crisis.

“We were responding to a call approximately every 30 minutes,” said Atkinson.

The move is in an effort to ease the strain on firefighters and improve mental health. It is predicted under the new call system that demand will be cut in half, with around 6,200 calls per year.

Calls not within level purple will now be the sole responsibility of BC Ambulance Service. Ian Tait is the communications director of Ambulance Paramedics of B.C.

“At the end of the day, municipalities have the ability to dictate how they want to spend their fire department budgets,” said Tait.

The union representing B.C.’s paramedics says it understands why the department has gone in the direction it has.

“They do not want to keep taking on more of the ambulance’s work that is being downloaded to municipalities,” said the communications director.

The union says it has been calling on the province for increased funding for more staff and units within the ambulance service. Tait does admit that with Victoria’s Fire Department now only responding to purple calls, patient care could be in jeopardy while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

“We are already going to all the calls that they go to; it’s just sometimes they are waiting on scene for hours with a patient, and a lot of times those patients in the [foregoing] might be waiting without firefighter assistance,” said Tait.