Wainwright nurse recalls the rush of burn victims after CFB Wainwright fire

Jill Hall has been a nurse for 15 years, and she has lived in Wainwright her whole life. She was called in on a Code Orange sent out by group text, and she arrived for her night shift around two in the morning on Oct. 17. The Wainwright hospital emergency department has six rooms, and staff were putting at least two people in each one. Stretchers were lined up in hallways, the waiting room and upstairs day surgery, about eight of them in all.

"There were so many people," Hall told reporters. Staff rotated patients into the operating room to be intubated, with a circuit set up upstairs to manage them. She said the burns were like nothing she had seen in her career.

The casualties came from the Oct. 17 incident at CFB Wainwright, where four soldiers were killed: Sgt. Morgan Wong of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment, and Privates Shaun Farrell, Aidan Goulding and Hayden Lykkemark of 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. Maj.-Gen. Wade Rutland, commander of 1st Canadian Division, said at a news conference on Oct. 22 that the fatal fire was caused by training on a grenade launcher range. Premier Danielle Smith said on Oct. 20 that some of the soldiers rushed to hospital after the fire remained in hospital.

At a Remembrance Day ceremony at the Wainwright hockey arena on Wednesday morning, the crowd was packed to near standing room. Names were read aloud, each marked with a poppy pinned to a large white cross, from Henry Norwest, an Indigenous sniper killed by a German sniper in August 1918, to Randy Joseph Payne, killed when a vehicle struck an IED in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in April 2006. Base commander Lt.-Col. Dustin MacLeod thanked the Wainwright Health Centre and emergency services. "Their professionalism, dedication and compassion throughout an incredibly difficult time have made a profound difference," MacLeod said.