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."
"I don't think there's anything wrong with making someone who is down and out a little more comfortable on a cold night. "
They are down and out because they are drunks. You are part of their problem. But hey, whatever helps you alleviate the guilt of being a productive member of society and earning what you have.
If you want to help folks go to a soup kitchen. Tutor them at a center. Give money to a halfway house or open up your spare bedroom. Don't give alcoholics booze when all of their problems stem from booze. I do the tutoring one myself when i have free time.
As for being an old style Methodist. I'm sure you can figure out where to stick your ad hominem.
It's called diffusion of responsibility. When people are in a group they think that it is the group's responsibility to solve a problem, not their own. Diffusion of responsibility is greater when the group is large, respected, and has an authority figure. In rare instances there are cases where people will take action. This is because these people are either not 'in tune' with the group or because they have a very strong level of personal responsibility. I believe in liberal areas there is a very strong level of group-think and a very weak level of personal responsibility, which is why the greatest atrocities in history have been committed by leftists (because noone would speak up).
BUMP and repeated for poignancy!
That might be one of the clearest explanations/rationale for Liberal mass psychosis I have ever seen...BRAVO!
I do have one nit to pick....while I believe your explanation about group-think is spot on, unfortunately it also applies to (unfortunately) Right-Wing Statists who believe in total Gub'Mint authority.
It is innate to all Liberals, and it happens (occasionally) to one-time Conservatives that begin to believe their own hype and press releases, and feel that THEY are the best Moral Authority.
I HATE that any Conservative could become this way, but it is an ultimate reflection of weak character (as you point out) and the inability to resist temptation, matched to the idea that they need to do "something", which eventually becomes complete dominance and control.
It is also the result of the belief that "they know better" than the public that elect them...just look around Free Republic and you can spot them.
Anyway, again, your nicely distilled explanation is fantastic.
