When a 14-year-old girl from an Ottawa suburb fatally overdosed from pharmaceutical drugs in February, the emergency responders first on the scene were not equipped with Naloxone, the live-saving antidote to opioids, according to sources.

Firefighters arrived at the Kanata, Ont. home of Chloe Kotval, 14, minutes after an emergency call was placed at 3:05 p.m. local time on Feb. 12, the sources told CTV Ottawa on Wednesday.

The sources said the timeline of events after that initial call was as follows:

  • 3:09 p.m.: Firefighters are the first to arrive at the Kotvals’ home.
  • 3:12 p.m.: Firefighters determine that Chloe had overdosed.
  • Firefighters begin CPR immediately and a defibrillator is hooked up, but never used.
  • 3:16 p.m.: Paramedics arrive at the scene to transport the teenager to hospital.

The paramedics detected a faint pulse at some point during the ambulance ride to the hospital, the sources said.

Making changes

The vice-president of the Ottawa Professional Firefighters’ Association, John Sobey, told CTV Ottawa on Wednesday that his union has been pushing for all emergency crews to be equipped with Naloxone kits in the wake of a string of overdoses, some of them fatal, that have rocked the community in recent months.

“It only makes sense that whether it's Naloxone kits, cardiac defibrillators, other medical condition interventions that we can assist with...that we have the proper equipment and the training so that we can be ready to answer those calls," Sobey said.

Sobey isn’t the only one pushing this idea. Earlier this week, the head of Ottawa’s Emergency Services, Anthony Di Monte, said the city will begin issuing Naloxone kits to all first responders and provide training on their use.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson told CTV Ottawa on Wednesday that he would like to see the changes happen as soon as possible.

"Don't get into this jurisdictional [thing], that's our responsibility and that's our silo,” said Watson. "Let's do the right thing so that we can save the most number of lives as quickly as possible."

Ottawa is behind other cities such as Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton in equipping all of their first responders with Naloxone kits to tackle the increase in pharmaceutical drug overdoses in the past year and a half.

The former chief of the Ottawa Police Service, Sen. Vernon White, acknowledged that the city and the province could have been more proactive about the situation.

“We were starting to see it come in the last six months so we probably should have got on the front end of it,” White told CTV Ottawa on Wednesday. “Health is a provincial responsibility and my answer always is that the province needs to jump into this as well.”

With a report from CTV Ottawa’s Matt Skube