A record number of Montreal residents went to the emergency room after slipping on black ice late last week, falls that victims say could have been avoided.
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“This could have been avoided with two or three spoonfuls of salt on the ice cream. […] It’s frustrating, it really hurts,” believes Louis Longpré.
The retiree and freelance photographer suffered a serious fall just outside his home in the Plateau-Mont-Royal district late Friday afternoon.
The 62-year-old man went to the emergency room alone. After eight hours of painful waiting, the diagnosis was made: On the left side, his humerus, the bone that connects the elbow to the neck, was broken very close to the joint.
Louis Longpré suffered a broken upper arm after a fall on the ice on Friday, as shown in this x-ray. Facebook
He's been convalescing for weeks and, to make matters worse, he's left-handed.
Record
Urgences-santé had received more than 1,400 calls, of which no less than a quarter involved falls, increasing the usual number of calls.
At times the paramedics received up to 125 calls per hour, more than twice as many as the usual 40 or 50.
“We broke a record. […] We've had all kinds of interventions. The spectrum ranges from nothing to hip fractures to lower limb injuries,” explains spokesman Jean-Pierre Rouleau.
Amine Esseghir is one of the unlucky ones. He had no choice but to call an ambulance on Thursday after falling on the ice on Saint-Denis Street. Since then he has been stuck at home, his leg immobilized by a splint.
“I was really careful, I even had special shoes […] Salting might not have created pieces of ice that were not visible,” testifies the journalist and writer.
“Worrying”
The city of Montreal received more than 550 calls to 311 about slippery sidewalks on Thursday, a number that declined in the following days (see below).
“This is worrying and is likely to increase with climate change. We cannot allow so many people to be injured in every weather phenomenon,” says Sandrine Cabana-Degani, director general of Piétons Québec.
According to a public health study released this fall, nearly 14,000 falls required emergency intervention treatment from 2016 to 2020.
The organization wants the city's Transportation Commission to investigate the matter. “We need to find ways to make the sidewalks less slippery, paying particular attention to the order of operations,” emphasizes Ms. Cabana-Degani.
Calls to 311 about slippery sidewalks
- Thursday, January 11th: 551
- Friday, January 12th: 283
- Saturday, January 13th: 36
- Sunday, January 14th: 43
Rosemont, Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Rivière-des-Prairies–Pointe-aux-Trembles, Plateau-Mont-Royal and Saint-Laurent are the counties that received the most calls Thursday.
Source: City of Montreal
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