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Tear gas shut down hospital ORs during Vancouver riot
Effect on sterile environment, air quality feared at St. Paul’s



Operating rooms at St. Paul’s Hospital were shut down the night of the Stanley Cup riot over fears that tear gas and pepper spray used by Vancouver police would affect the air quality and sterile environment in the 13 ORs.

Hospital spokesman Justin Karasick said the dispersal of tear gas too close to the hospital was discussed at debriefing sessions between hospital, city and police representatives after the June 15 riot.

“[We] will be working with the police to ensure that firing tear gas so close to the hospital does not happen again,” Karasick said.

Although the hospital has three different filter sets and positive pressure systems to ensure operating room air purity, when the tear gas drifted two or three blocks over to the hospital, a decision was made to push a button to shut down the ventilation system in the operating rooms. That effectively closed the rooms, which are on the third floor of the hospital.

Fortunately, none of the patients being treated at the hospital that night — including the 147 rioters and bystanders who went to the emergency department — needed surgery. The volume of patients seen in the ER that night was about double the usual number.

St. Paul’s ORs are typically only used late at night for emergencies and there were no surgical cases taking place nor scheduled the night of the riots, said Jeannette Beattie, head of the hospital’s emergency preparedness team.

If any patients had required surgery that night, Beattie acknowledged it’s possible ambulances would have had to divert them to Vancouver General Hospital.

The Vancouver police department would not comment on the issue. Spokeswoman Const. Jana McGuinness said: “All aspects of the police response during the riot are being examined as part of the external review.”

The provincially funded review is investigating, among other things, the police and city role in the riot. It is headed by John Furlong, former head of the 2010 Winter Olympics organizing committee, and Douglas Keefe, former Nova Scotia deputy attorney-general.

On the night of the riot, the hospital’s incident commander and other emergency response team members put a Code Orange (disaster, influx of mass casualties) into effect from 10 p.m. to 1:50 a.m. and a Code Grey (ventilation system failure) from 12:22 a.m. to 1:05 a.m.

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Beattie said that even with all the disaster planning conducted by hospital and police officials before and after the 2010 Olympics, the issue of the effect of tear gas on hospital air quality was not specifically addressed.

“It’s definitely a lesson learned. We discussed terrorist incidents, hazardous substance responses, chemical exposures, but not tear gas deployment by police close to the hospital,” Beattie said.

During the riot, tear gas was used at Howe and Robson Streets and on Granville between Nelson and Davie. The wind that night helped carry it toward the hospital.

Patients who were tear-gassed were hosed down and decontaminated by nurses outside so the powder and gas fumes were not brought into the hospital, said Shaf Hussain, another St. Paul’s spokesman.

“We certainly had a lot of people converge in front of our emergency department who had tear gas on them. And, yes, our Olympic planning had covered decontamination protocol and we had trained staff on chemical decontamination, and will continue to do so. Before the Olympics, we practised mass decontamination at St. Paul’s during an event called exercise gold.”

Louie Rapos, senior manager of facilities maintenance and operations at St. Paul’s, said he is waiting for an answer from manufacturers of the carbon and HEPA filtration systems about whether the filters are capable of extracting the particulates in tear gas and pepper spray.

“Carbon can pull out car fumes but I’m not sure if it will remove tear gas and pepper spray,” he said, noting that there was also a lot of smoke in the outside air from the many cars that were set on fire by rioters.

He said although the ventilation system at St. Paul’s was installed in the 1980s, it is still sophisticated and if necessary, can be turned on in some ORs but not in others. The decision to do that in such a scenario would have to be made in concert with air quality and infection control experts.

“It’s a terrible thing, but every time there is a disaster, there are lessons learned. The decision to use tear gas was a bad idea in retrospect, yes, and maybe using water cannons would have been better. But the police didn’t have it easy with those crowds and the riots,” he said.

Furlong could not be reached for comment about the effect of tear gas on the hospital and whether his report will address it. Citizens have until Friday to make submissions by sending emails to: [email protected]. The findings by Furlong and Keefe must be reported to the government, City of Vancouver and the police board by the end of this month.

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Operating rooms at St. Paul’s Hospital were shut down the night of the Stanley Cup riot over fears that tear gas and pepper spray used by Vancouver police would affect the air quality and sterile environment in the 13 ORs