An eight-month-old child died on Thursday in British Columbia, where there was no ambulance service in the town. Paramedics said the call came on Thursday night regarding an infant suffering a cardiac arrest in the Barriere area, about a 45-minute drive north of Kamloops.

Troy Clifford, Chief Paramedic in British Columbia, described the situation as the "worst-case scenario," saying that the ambulance that usually served the area was in Kamloops instead, helping cover staffing shortages there.

Clifford said, "It is very tragic in this situation that we did not have an ambulance available for someone at the time of need."

On the other hand, the district mayor told CTV News that the family was Indigenous and the child was eight months old. He also said local officials are not regularly informed about ambulance crew issues and emphasized that he does not want to speculate whether response time was a factor in the child's death.

Barriere Ward Mayor Stamer said, "I would not be surprised if we did not have ambulance service on Thursday night, because we have some significant gaps in service." He added, "We know of cases where people suffered serious problems and died because an ambulance was not present in other communities."

As a reminder, on August 14, a man suffered a cardiac arrest just 200 meters from the ambulance station, but the nearest staffed ambulance did not arrive for 29 minutes, according to Ashcroft Mayor Barbara Roden.