Calls began coming in around 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday. People were overdosing in downtown Belleville, Ontario, after taking drugs.

A man named Steve said, “I saw five drop like boom, boom, boom, boom,” and was arriving at Bridge Street United Church, which offers intake services for the homeless in the city, when he said people started collapsing on the ground, recalling, “Between the time they inhaled and the time they went down, I set five minutes at most.”

Over the course of one hour, emergency services responded to 13 overdose cases, all within a few buildings, prompting police to issue an alert warning the public to “exercise caution and avoid unnecessary travel” to the heart of downtown.

By Wednesday morning, the total number of suspected overdose cases had risen to 16, none of which were fatal.

Belleville Mayor Neil Ellis said the city will declare a state of emergency on Thursday, hoping to gain more support and funding from the provincial government.

He told CTV News: “We can’t afford to fix this ourselves, it’s a crisis, it’s a medical crisis and a health crisis, and resources must be directed from the province and federal governments to try to solve this problem.”

This is not the first time Belleville has suffered a sharp rise in overdoses; in November, there were 90 suspected overdose cases in one week, one of which was fatal.

Ellis said increasing housing for those experiencing homelessness would help, but acknowledges there is no easy solution, adding, “The best case is housing first and comprehensive services.” “It won’t help everyone but that is the gold standard.”

In British Columbia, there were 2,511 suspected overdose deaths in 2023, a five percent increase from the previous year and the highest ever recorded in the province, and in Toronto, paramedics responded to 25 fatal suspected opioid overdoses in December 2023, and Ottawa Public Health says there were 22 suspected overdose deaths last month alone.

Contributing to opioid overdose deaths is that the drug supply has become increasingly toxic, often tainted with fentanyl, carfentanil, and animal tranquilizers.

In the same context, Derek Saint John, who works at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre in Ottawa, said: “Right now, we are seeing animal tranquilizers called xylazine in the drugs.”

He continued: “Xylazine reduces blood flow to the extremities, so we are seeing people with really severe wounds.” In some cases, those wounds can be so severe that amputation of limbs is necessary.

Clients in Sandy Hill can bring their drug supplies for testing, and Saint John says xylazine appears in one out of every two or three samples taken.

Todd Buchanan works with people suffering from addiction in Belleville and described Tuesday’s events as “devastating,” saying “it could have been much worse,” expressing gratitude that no one died, and when an event like this happens in a community, he hopes people will pay attention to what happened and not judge but find ways so it doesn’t happen again.”

Buchanan wants to see new approaches taken by all levels of government to address this crisis, saying the current approach clearly isn’t working.

He said: “(The solution) comes from the government’s willingness to think outside the box and try to find solutions that might seem controversial on the surface.”

But these solutions may take years, which is far too long for people like Steve. He is homeless and watches more and more friends fall victim to the opioid crisis. He says everything seems backward and not enough has been done to prevent what is happening.