Military sends 15 nurses to Alberta to help treat injured Wainwright soldiers
Acute Care Alberta says the nurses will work for more than a month at Calgary's Foothills Medical Centre and Edmonton's University of Alberta Hospital.
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Fifteen nurses are heading to Alberta's two critical burn centres for more than a month, Acute Care Alberta said. They will work at the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary and the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, where each centre has eight beds. Federal emergency management minister Eleanor Olszewski said in a social media post that Alberta requested the nursing support.
The nurses are going to the burn centres for soldiers hurt in the October 17 fire that overtook troops during a live-fire training exercise at CFB Wainwright, southeast of Edmonton. The fire killed four Canadian Armed Forces members and injured 39 others. The military reported last week that 25 of the injured remained in hospital. Thirteen are in critical condition.
Dr. Vincent Gabriel, medical director of the Calgary Firefighters Burn Treatment Centre at Foothills, said patients with large burns will have hospital stays measured in months, not days or weeks. "Everyone in the burn community comes into this space extremely dedicated to the patient to a fault," he said. "But there is an upper limit really to the number of hours per day and how many people we have."
Three probes are underway into the fire: two military and one civilian by Alberta's medical examiner. Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan has committed to publicly releasing the findings of the fire investigation.
