VIA Rail Quarantined Passenger Train


CBCNSfan

CBCNSfan

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http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=504180
No sign of outbreak on quarantined train, health officials say

A Via Rail Passenger Train was quarantined at a Northern Ontario town for a time today. The train was traveling from BC to Toronto On. when a woman passenger died and others took sick with flue like symptoms.

"Health officials say there is no evidence of an infectious disease outbreak in connection with the death of a passenger on a Via Rail train travelling from Vancouver to Toronto.

Although they do not yet know how the 60-year-old woman died aboard the train Friday morning outside of Timmins, Ont., officials say her death and the illnesses of six other passengers are not related.

"It happened to be a confluence of three [medical conditions] at the same time," Ontario's acting chief medical officer David Williams said at a press conference this afternoon.

One passenger who suffered from chest pain was airlifted to the Timmins and District Hospital. The passenger was tested for influenza and other respiratory illnesses.

"The person that felt ill ... had some shortness of breath and the physician in the Timmins hospital assessed that the person had no fever, no cough -- probably more of an exacerbation of an underlying medical condition," Dr. Williams said."

More can be read at the above URL clickable link

Cheers Willis
 
Good grief! There seems to be no evidence that the woman passenger's cause of death was from anything infectious. The other five people were traveling as a group so it's likely that some type of upper respiratory infection was caught by one of the group and passed on to the others. Having paramedics, police, helicopters, and the guys in spacesuits show up is guaranteed to set off hyperventilation and panic attacks, the likely cause of the chest pain and shortness of breath of the patient who was airlifted out. I know that the authorities are nervous in this post 9/11 environment but a train is a most unlikely place to spread something like anthrax, which I'm sure was the infectious agent they were worried about. This could have been handled in a much more low key fashion rather quarantining an entire train (and blocking the mainline) for 10 hours. :rolleyes:
 
Maybe they'd spent too much time watching that movie about a train with a deadly virus on board. I can't recall the name, but they quarantine the train, lock folks in, and I think they finally ran the whole thing off a bridge.

Up until now I thought it was a work of fiction. :)
 
Can't find a Death Train movie with Jon Voight, but one great train related movie he was in was Runaway Train. :)

I work for the Ontario Provincial Police (the same LA that responded to this) and I can tell you for a fact that the bigger problem was where they stopped the train. It was a tiny town, way up north from civilization, and all levels of help (EMS, police, fire, etc) were taxed far past their limit. To show you how rural the area is, the same phone line that the media was tying up looking for updates was also the area's only 911 line. It was utter chaos. I give those poor men and women full marks for handling it as well as they could.

I guess they may have done it on purpose in case there was some type of infectious disease (instead of riding right in to the middle of Toronto), but man what a mess.

Mark
 
Mark,
Didn't know you worked for the OPP. I was with LASO for 5 years and the Sonoma County (CA) sheriff's department for 25 years. Thankfully retired now.

Do you know who made the decision to stop the train in such an isolated location? If one passenger had expired, why would they not remove her from the train after she was pronounced, wait for the coroner to show up, and let the train continue? How did these other five people with what seems like non-specific respiratory problems get connected to the dead passenger? Even if there really was some kind of virus on the train, moving it to a larger city where they could have done proper (and timely) decontamination procedures and had better communications would seem to make a lot more sense. Seems like someone in charge went way over the top on this one.
 
Don't have specific knowledge on the situation Jim, I just know from guys I work with how underequipped the northern areas of the province can be. If you look at google maps at Ontario, you'll see a town called Orillia (where I live). It is essentially considered "northern Ontario". Now look at how much province is above us! It is an emmense area of land to cover, and those northern towns have their own problems even without something like this happening. It's a good thing it isn't einter...

I can only guess, but it is possible that an outbreak scare played a part. In a similar way that 9/11 changed the way of life for Americans, the SARS problem in Toronto a few years ago really opened the eyes of the healthcare industry. Better to play it safe I guess. *shrugsshoudlers*

Mark
 
Indeed, Mark, there is an awful lot of sparsely populated space north of you. All the more reason to get the the train to a reasonable size town with a hospital so any patients that needed help could be isolated and get care. Even if was a case of SARS, it's not an easy infection to pass on casually and quick treatment is the best answer to stop it from spreading. Have you heard anything more about the actual cause of death of the woman passenger and any other condition reports on the rest of the passengers?
 
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