On his first deployment with Samaritan’s Purse, Kelowna resident Ian Larrett and his wife travelled to one of Italy’s hardest hit regions to fight COVID-19.
“We’re familiar with the equipment and the typical layout of these setups from training, but the part that we had no way of preparing for was just dealing specifically one disease itself. Normally when you go to a disaster relief area you deal with whatever comes in, whether it's trauma or illness or anything else, but this was specifically COVID-19 patients all day every day and all night every night.”
Larrett said it was scary to see just how bad the virus can be, "When we left things hadn't quite heated up here yet and we landed there and it was kind of right around when everything was peaking for them. So it was ambulance sirens all night long and it was just patients overflowing out of every possible space they could be put."
Larrett is a BC Ambulance paramedic and his wife an ER nurse at Kelowna General Hospital.
He says the trip was one of the hardest things him and his wife have ever done, but also one of the most rewarding and they’d do it again in a heartbeat.