Interior Health has begun to support the return of residents to Parkside Community in Chase now that evacuation alerts for that area associated with the Bush Creek East wildfire have been rescinded.

Repatriation will occur gradually and carefully to ensure appropriate staffing and resources are in place when residents return to their homes.

In 2021, 263 paper medical charts were shipped to East Kootenay Regional Hospital where they were placed in the basement. The charts belonged to people who had died from toxic drugs, and were sent to the hospital for a project designed to better understand and address the failure of systems to prevent these deaths.

Alison Ko, who was at the time a long-term Interior Health employee, joined the project team which needed someone with a nursing background.

Please see the attached document to learn more about the look, contamination, and risk associated with the current drug alert.

If there’s one lesson to take away from the toxic drug crisis – now sometimes referred to as the unregulated drug poisoning emergency – it’s that things are not always what they may appear.

Despite what we might believe about who uses substances and why, or what we see in our communities or in the media, consider these stats from the BC Coroners Service:

Oliver and area residents are advised of temporary changes to emergency department hours at South Okanagan General Hospital due to unexpected limited physician availability. 

Emergency services will be unavailable from 6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 4 until 8 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 5 and patients can access care at Penticton Regional Hospital.

During this time, all other inpatient services will continue as normal at South Okanagan General Hospital.

Castlegar and area residents are advised of temporary changes to emergency department hours at Castlegar and District Community Health Centre due to unexpected limited physician availability. 

Starting 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 3, emergency services will be unavailable and patients can access care at Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital in Trail or Kootenay Lake Hospital in Nelson.