Essex County Council addressed the issues surrounding 'Code Blacks' and EMS pressures throughout the region this week at their regular meeting on Wednesday.
A 'Code Black' is when there are no ambulances available to respond to emergency calls because paramedics are waiting at a hospital to off-load the patient.
In the first two weeks of October, a total of 491 minutes of 'Code Blacks' have been issued by Essex Windsor EMS compared to 116 minutes in all of September.
Due to these extremely high numbers, the County of Essex declared a local emergency in response to ongoing delays faced by EMS in offloading patients at area hospitals on Monday.
On Wednesday, Ontario Minister of Health Sylvia Jones, joined by local MPPs, met with Warden Gary McNamara and Essex-Windsor EMS Chief Bruce Krauter to discuss a course of action for this healthcare crisis.
Krauter was emotional during the meeting while describing the scary event of realizing that were no ambulances available from Windsor to as far as London-Middlesex.
"At one point, Lambton, Elgin, London-Middlesex, the County of Essex, and Chatham-Kent had no ambulances. And as stuff kind of morphed, and flowed, we did gain more but then we lost more. And basically, all of Southwestern Ontario didn't have the resources."
Krauter says it took about eight hours on Monday to get back to what he calls "normal" as Windsor Fire and Rescue began helping with some of the EMS calls.
He says he decided to call the local emergency after Windsor Fire responded to a call of an unconscious person, and after requesting an ambulance, they were told the nearest ambulance was Thamesville.
"And the recommendation, by myself, which was hard was to declare it. It's a hard decision. It puts a lot of weight, but it's needed because it has to come to the forefront."
McNamara says he felt good about the conversation that was held with Health Minister and local MPP's.
"Having that meeting, and starting that afternoon of the declaration, 11 points were brought forward, some really good points. Some of it can be administered very quickly as the minister said, but some of it, the ministry has to give us the go ahead in order for us to do it."
Leamington Mayor Hilda MacDonald applauded Chief Krauter for making the difficult decision that he made on Monday.
"Thank you Chief for having the courage to declare the emergency because as we look around the province, no one else has done it. So, good on you to have the guts to do that because it takes guts as we all know."
Krauter says he wants the public to know that frontline workers are working extremely hard to ensure everyone is able to be seen by a healthcare professional.
He adds that the community is still encouraged to call 911 for medical attention when or if they require it.