To the Editor,
Re: Mobile hospital prepares for crisis, Oct. 4.
After reading about our government’s new $5-million mobile hospital with four full-time and two part-time staff, I thought to myself, (like many other citizens no doubt), I sure feel a lot safer now.
What a brilliant idea. Why don’t we dig up all of our hospitals and put them on wheels ready to be trucked off to the next disaster?
Then I thought about the logistics of this. Sure, it’s one thing to drive the hospital over to Abbotsford a day or so in advance of the air show and wait for a plane to crash into the stands. It’s another thing altogether to get the hospital quickly packed up in Abbotsford and onto a ferry on a long weekend, (without a reservation) to assist with a disaster on the Island – and what if a plane crashes at the air show in the meantime?
No, this doesn’t really make sense.
The Abbotsford air show would already have emergency medical facilities. We already have permanent hospitals on the Island and around the province where sick and injured are brought by ambulance and medevac and our communities have emergency plans for disasters that have shown to be effective.
How could our government justify this huge and ongoing expense of taxpayers’ money?
Then I read the last paragraph of the article and it all made sense.
This “hospital on wheels” was left over from the 2010 Winter Games and our government bought it from VANOC to help reduce the Olympic deficit.
Nice try Christy Clark, but I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, which is one thing trucks are really meant for, and not for hauling hospitals.
Park it where it can be put to good use on a permanent basis and sell the truck.
Brent Kaufmann
Nanaimo