Quebec unprepared to deal with Humboldt-type bus crash in rural area: surgeon
MONTREAL — Last Friday night, a few hours after a bus crashed in rural Saskatchewan killing 15 people, a prominent Montreal doctor who is also chief surgeon of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team couldn’t sleep.
What kept David Mulder awake was his belief that if the same tragedy occurred in a small town in Quebec, the province would be unprepared.
Quebec is the sole province in Canada and Montreal the only urban centre in North America without a helicopter program that can quickly transport seriously injured people to trauma care, Mulder told The Canadian Press on Wednesday.
He gave the hypothetical example of a truck hitting a school bus in Victoriaville, 165 kilometres east of one of Montreal’s Level 1 trauma centres, and said, “what do you think would happen?”