‘Kind of scares me': Saskatoon Fire Department fearful as opioid overdoses double

CTV News

03-06-2025

A passionate committee meeting at City Hall has shed some light on Saskatoon's opioid crisis.
'The pressure that this has put on us, has been a pressure that we've never seen before,' said Kayla Demong, the executive director of Prairie Harm Reduction.
Earlier this year, Saskatoon saw a surge in overdose calls related to opioids over several weeks in late February and March.
On Tuesday, the Saskatoon Fire Department, Prairie Harm Reduction and the Saskatoon Community Clinic told councillors about the data compiled, the toll it took on people and the fears that linger as the crisis shows no signs of slowing down.
'They have spent the last six months running into a burning building,' Toby Esterby, the chief operating office of the Saskatoon Community Clinic, said of the fire department.
'That burning building is your city. They are literally saving hundreds of lives.'
From Jan. 1, 2025 to May 21, 2025, Saskatoon firefighters responded to 1,149 overdoses, compared to 568 in that same span last year.
The jump represents a 102 per cent increase, largely fueled by 509 overdoses in a month where the Ministry of Health issued five of its nine drug alerts related to the spike in overdoses.
On March 6, the city activated its emergency operations centre to better respond and share information between government agencies and community partners. This eventually led to the province initiating its emergency operations centre — the first time that has happened for a city event.
Data shared by the fire department says there were nine days between Jan. 1 and May 21 when the fire department responded to over 20 overdoses per day, and two days where there were over 30 overdoses.
In 2024, the fire department responded to a total of 1,281 overdoses. By May 31, 2025, there have been 1,217 overdoses.
In 2024, the firefighters responded to an average of 3.3 overdoses per day. So far in 2025, firefighters are responding to eight overdoses in a 24-hour shift.
'It kind of scares me what's going to happen going into the summer,' Assistant Fire Chief Rob Hogan said.
Hogan said when he began working as a paramedic, a handful of overdose calls in a year would be 'shocking.' He says paramedics in Saskatoon are responding to more than that in one shift, and something needs to be done.
'If I was to come to you and say we had eight house fires over three and a half last year, there would be a ton of questions asked about what's going on,' he said to councillors.
'These are direct lives that are being impacted. So, I really think this year we're going to see a substantial increase per day of overdoses that we go to.'
While he's afraid of how the opioid crisis will affect his staff if it continues like he anticipates, he says community partners are feeling it as well.
Demong said she became the focal point of the crisis, and after repeated traumatic experiences, Prairie Harm needed to close temporarily on March 19 for the sake of her staff's health.
'We were the ones being asked to do all the drug testing, which meant we were the ones out there trying to find samples to test,' Demong said. " We were the ones having to give that information back to the province so that they could issue alerts in a timely manner. I'm the one getting phone calls from the police saying, 'do you know who's doing this?' she said.
'We needed a break and there should be no confusion in that.'
As part of the provincial response, the Saskatchewan Health Authority agreed to contribute $100,000 — that's equivalent to the cost of approximately four primary care paramedics in one month — to help Saskatoon cover the $145,000 of overtime incurred in a six-week span, let alone the cost of Naloxone kits and other supplies.
The city and province were also able to collaborate to create a dashboard of data of the number of overdose deaths and other applicable information.
But Pamela Goulden-McLeod, the city's director of emergency management, said the provincial data uses overdoses presented at the emergency room, which she estimates is roughly half of all overdoses firefighters respond to.
'Is it your understanding that the provincial government is now just viewing this as our new normal?' Mayor Cynthia Block asked Hogan.
Fire Chief Doug Wegren told councillors the fire department, along with other divisions in the city, is tracking costs related to overdoses, encampments and other issues of provincial responsibility that have fallen on the city recently in hopes of preparing a report in the future.
Hogan says plenty needs to happen for meaningful change to reverse the opioid crisis. He says Saskatoon will likely surpass last year's number of calls in a matter of days, and something as simple as communication between agencies can be complicated by privacy legislation.
'I hate to say it, HIPA (Health Information Protection Act) needs to change because this is a crisis,' he said. 'And if we aren't willing to share the data, and unfortunately, step on a little bit of your liberties to try to save your life, we're never going to get there.'
Hogan said if one organization can't get a hold of crucial information and share that information with another partner to meet a person's needs or allocated resources, he suspects the crisis will continue.
'If we could get to that level of interaction, I think we could start to really solve this problem,' Hogan said.