Trey Helten wanted to get help for a man who had dropped to the ground during an overdose in a Downtown Eastside alley in September. There was one problem: no one knew where they were.
Helten, who volunteers with the Overdose Prevention Society, had rushed over with a kit containing the opioid antidote, naloxone. He offered his phone to one of the man’s friends and told him to call 911.
“He was behind a retaining wall, slumped there, totally purple,” Helten said. “The person I had given my phone to couldn’t figure where to send the paramedics to. It was a mess.”
Helten realized that nowhere in the alley was there a sign that could help anyone figure out their location, in a lane north of Keefer Street. And in an emergency, that delay could have cost that man his life.
“It hit home for me on a deep level. I was shocked leaving the scene that there were no alleyway markers. That baffled me, and honestly, I decided to do something about it,” he said.
On any given street in Vancouver, someone can figure out where they are quickly by looking for street signs at the corners. In the alleys, it’s only a rare building that has put its address on a rear wall.
And those alleys are where some addicts inject drugs. During the opioid crisis, where contaminated drugs can be deadly, that can result in an overdose. Ten per cent of opioid deaths have occurred in public spaces such as alleys, according to a recent BC Coroners Service report.
Now, when Helten finds an alley with no visible addresses, he makes one of his own. He uses stencils and spray paint to mark buildings – just as he does with graffiti murals he’s drawn with others.
The City of Vancouver also put up over 50 signs on hydro poles in September in alleys from Cambie and Gore, and from the Burrard Inlet to Pender Street, based on a proposal from a VPD Downtown Eastside beat cop.
“First responders attending emergency calls in the DTES lanes regularly experience difficulty locating the party who requires assistance. Individuals calling 911 to report an incident in a lane often have trouble identifying where they are an the resulting uncertainty for the call-taker and/or the responding agencies can impact response times. In situations where seconds can make a difference, such delays represent a real risk to public safety,” wrote Paul Mochrie, Vancouver’s deputy city manager.
Vancouver firefighters say the signs have already made a difference.
“By giving a caller a way to identify the street name and a number allows us to get Narcan (the trade name of naloxone) to them much faster,” Capt. Jonathan Gormick told CTV News.
But those signs don’t extend to all areas where injection drug users are found, says Sarah Blyth, an independent city council candidate who runs the OPS. There’s no city sign near the Keefer Street lane.
“Ideally they would expand this program where certain alleys are high drug use. There are other alleys that aren’t as frequented,” she said.
“These are folks getting together and coming up with their own solution. And doing it for themselves. I think it’s great and we need to expand the program,” she said.
So Helten keeps painting. He says the owners of the buildings he paints on have mostly been supportive, because they understand the danger in a crisis that kills four people a day on average in B.C.
He hopes that a big-picture solution to the crisis can be found that gives addicts the treatment and recovery they need, and provides them a safe supply of opioids that isn’t contaminated.
“I’ve lost so many of my friends,” Helten said. “I’ve gone to too many funerals.”
