Last week­end was “Doors Open” in Ottawa, a yearly event dur­ing which a num­ber of places open their doors to the pub­lic. Not only admis­sion is free, but you get the chance to peek into a num­ber of inter­est­ing places which are not usu­ally open to the gen­eral pub­lic. Being my usual curi­ous self, I decided to go visit the Ottawa Para­medic Head­quar­ter in Walkley.

As much as I like archi­tec­ture and old build­ings, which is what a lot of peo­ple come to see dur­ing this event, I was more inter­ested in get­ting an insider peek into the day of the para­medics. Like most peo­ple, I occa­sion­ally see them rac­ing on the free­way, or I hear the sound of the ambu­lance siren in the dis­tance and know some­thing is going on — that’s about it.

The para­medic head­quar­ter was built in 2005. This is where all the staff reports before being dis­patched. A huge indoors garage is home to what seemed dozens of vehi­cles, from bicy­cles (to access crowded places eas­ily) to huge trail­ers which carry tons of sup­plies in case of a major emergency.

Sev­eral rooms stock the sup­plies: stretch­ers and lit­tle bags, full of drugs and med­ical sup­plies. They are all checked daily and repack­aged as needed, and then sealed. The build­ing also has a clean­ing sta­tion for vehi­cles, which are all dis­in­fected and checked for dam­ages before being parked again.

Upstairs in the build­ings are the staff gym and phys­io­ther­apy cen­ter (appar­ently, this job is hard on the body!) and the emer­gency con­trol room.

Every­thing looked so orga­nized and “under con­trol” — I actu­ally found that very com­fort­ing. And the para­medics seemed to be a ded­i­cated team!

You can see the full Doors Open 2010 set here.

Ottawa Para­medic Service

Ambu­lances Park­ing Lot

Get­ting The Vehi­cle Ready

Stretch­ers	More Stretch­ers
Sup­plies	Repack­ag­ing Supplies
Wait­ing for a Call	Clean­ing The Vehicles
Ambu­lance Stock Supplies	An Old Ambulance
Train­ing Room	Staff Gym
Emer­gency Con­trol Room	Wait­ing For a Call

Inside of an Ambulance

Ottawa

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3. Ottawa Zom­bie Walk
4. A Walk In Ottawa
5. Prince of Wales Bridge