VANCOUVER -- St. Paul's emergency nurse Christine Wellstead has seen some pretty rough things on the job, but nothing has shaken her as much as the callous indifference she witnessed Monday night as bystanders ignored an unconscious homeless man wrapped in a burning comforter.
Wellstead was on her way home from work around 10:30 p.m. when she stopped at Starbucks at 19th and Cambie for a coffee. Smelling smoke, she walked outside to see what was burning, but all she could see was a woman sitting at an outside table, talking calmly on her phone as clouds of smoke rolled past her.
"She's on her cellphone, having her coffee and she's sitting amongst this acrid smoke," she said.
Looking further, Wellstead found a man slumped on a bench in a nearby alcove on the side street, wrapped in a comforter that was on fire.
"It was smouldering, and it was by his face," she said. "It was all orange, and there was smoke. I threw the blanket on the ground and tried to wake him up, but he didn't wake up."
She ran back into Starbucks for water to put out the fire, and that's when she got a real shock.
She said another woman customer standing at the counter told her: "Just leave him alone, he's a homeless person," Wellstead recalled. "I looked at her and I said, 'What are you talking about?'
"And she says, 'He's homeless, just forget it.' "
Appalled, Wellstead rushed back out with water to douse the fire and still couldn't wake the man, so she ran inside again and asked a barista to call for help.
"I said, 'You'd better call an ambulance, because I can't wake him up,' and the lady [customer] said, 'Don't call the hospital, they don't want him,' and I just looked at her, and I said, 'I work at the hospital and yeah, we want him.' "
Wellstead finally woke the man and got him sitting up as they waited for the ambulance. He told her he was prone to seizures and believed he had one while he was smoking, wrapped in his comforter against the night chill.
Wellstead said she didn't believe he suffered serious burns. The fire and ambulance crews who answered the call were great, she said, and treated him with respect as they took him away to St. Paul's Hospital.
The ambulance service confirmed a man was taken to St. Paul's after the incident. CanWest News could not obtain information on his condition Tuesday.
The well-dressed customer who made the callous remarks sat alone in her car at the curb, sipping her coffee and watching as the event unfolded.
Wellstead went home, but she was still upset Tuesday morning. "I can't get my head around it," she said. "I'm so upset. I was almost in tears.
"I know there are a lot of homeless people here and I know some of them can be annoying, but this was a human being.
"His blanket was on fire."
"Again, it was 10:30 at night. There may not be enough evidence in this article to convict anybody."
Convict anyone of what?
Not putting there coffee down an checking out where the smoke is coming from?
Not leaving the counter of your $8.15 per hour job because you're boss may fire you for shutting down your till a 10:30 on a Friday on one of the slowest corners in Vancouver on a Friday night?
The guy was unconscious from a seizure lying under a burning blanket in an alley.
He is a street person in Vancouver and no Vancouver lawyer is going to take his case pro bono.
In the US trial lawyers are slimey.
In Canada pro bono lawyers are coke addicts and leave a slime trail you can follow on the street all the way to their offices in the local strip mall.
Hell I was a defense witness in a case where the lawyer's office was a converted kiosk in a car park and his high end client was a neo Nazi that was deported to Germany!!!!!!!!
If you think American lawyers are crooked you should come up here. A friend of mine got a lawyer to take on her divorce case pro bono. She had one meeting with him where he took her to IKEA to pick up furniture for his apartment and he tried to charge her $1,500 for the 'consultation'.
She responded by invoicing him $1,500 for consulting fees for decorating his apartment and notified the Local Bar Association and requested that they tax his bill which entails an automatic audit.
End of story.
The scene hasn't shifted it's still the one hundred block.
However the only businesses remaining are the Army and Navy and two hotel bars that are just jack joints.
A methodist ministry and Buddhist temple have left the area. the rest of the block is boarded up.
I used to spend a lot of time there when Simon Frazer University had an downtown artist studio in the 100 block.
You could still get excellent Chinese lunches very cheap.
Since then crack has destroyed everything, good cheap restaurants, bars and bands; now it's run by junkies.
What a waist of Vancouver history.
100 Block Hasting was the big band ballroom street of the 1940's. One building still has the original stage and dance floor and is contemned because it doesn't have fire escapes and sprinklers.
I actually worked with construction crew who were all ex addicts who went to narc anon. One was a young electrician who was very good at his trade and came to the West Coast to get straight.
The foreman ran a halfway house and closed down a couple of houses that had been taken over by dealers. Another guy was a native who owned a famous fishing boat called the Haida Warrior.
He lost his deck mate and partner over the side of his crab boat in November in Queen Charlotte strait and jumped over the side to save him and failed.
Plus his thirteen year old daughter was raped by his best friend.
When I met him he was off jack but a year later he was back on and sinking fast. By now he's gone.
Sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes the bar eats you.
Sad but true. Nobodys fault. Sh** happens and then you die.
Great points, and I have a few things here...
1) Thank you for your service!
2) I am (until recently crippled) a Pharm Chemist that has worked on Nuc Pharm Med and Nuc Chem. I know EXACTLY what you speak of...It fell regularly to me to be the one to say "No" to the clueless "Dilbert-esque" Boss, because I was the ONLY one who had the guts and character to do it...everyone else was a "yes" man! Not exactly an encouraging characteristic when you are working with 100+ curies of P-32, Co 60, Sr 85, Na 22, ect...when I was working the waldoes, I had to keep one eye on the cell, and one on the untrustworthy weasels!
3) I guess I never subscribed to "group-think"...I've always been my own person and went my own way, and never cared what the rest thought!
4) I agree completely with your "I also look out for people to don't react normally because they are the type of people you could trust with your life." comment 100%! It's now instinctive to me to do that in every situation I find myself in.