‘It’s crazy’: Saskatoon firefighter says bear spray keeping first responders busy

Assaults involving bear spray are a big issue in Saskatoon, and the stinging spray is causing problems not only for the public, but for first responders as well.

The Saskatoon Police Service said a woman was bear sprayed last Monday after refusing to hand over a cigarette to her attacker. The following day, police responded to three separate assaults involving bear spray.

Read More:

• Saskatoon police briefs: Woman bear sprayed in dispute over cigarette
• Two kids, ages seven and eight, bear sprayed in Saskatoon: Police
• Are Saskatchewan’s new bear spray laws working?

Jay Protz, a firefighter and president of the Saskatoon Firefighters Union Local 80, joined guest host Brent Loucks on the Evan Bray Show on Monday to explain some of the challenges associated with criminal use of the capsaicin-based irritant.

Listen to the full interview here, or read the transcript below:

The following questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

BRENT LOUCKS: Does a day go by – it seems certainly a week doesn’t go by – in Saskatoon where you don’t hear about bear spray in malls, schools, restaurants, apartment buildings? Has there ever been a time like this, where we’ve seen so many incidents of this bear spray being released in our city?

PROTZ: No, it’s crazy. It’s ridiculous, nuts. You know, the one other place you maybe didn’t mention was our buses. Our friends over at transit or are getting hit as well, and people on the bus are feeling the effects, too.

LOUCKS: And like so many of our social problems these days, nobody’s really got an answer how to deal with this stuff, do we?

Yeah, I would agree with you on that, especially since bear spray – or protective spray – is legal. There are illegal substances that go along with that, but bear spray, pepper spray, is legal. And yeah, almost readily found, right? You can get it on Amazon, you can go to Canadian Tire, you can go just about anywhere and find it.

LOUCKS: And the whole premise of it, originally, it was developed to save you in a bear attack, I guess?

Oh, exactly. If we’re talking a bear, which it is meant for, it’s going to irritate their skin, their mucus system, that kind of stuff, so it’s actually quite painful when you use it on a human. We’re a lot smaller than a bear.

LOUCKS: You see a show on TV and they show somebody, a police officer, something, pull out their mace, and it’s this little container and it shoots a squirt, a steady stream. But I saw a video recently, I think it was just last week in Saskatoon, where a guy bear sprayed in what I think was a convenience store, and it was like a cloud. It just surrounded the guy that he was pointing it at.

Yeah, exactly. The bear spray that we have, or is readily available, is about 10 meters. It’ll fill up a room. We go in, we ventilate, like you mentioned (at) the malls. We’ll stack fans. We’ll have the ladder come and have to stack fans in series and try and ventilate them all, and try and get it out of the ventilation system that way, because it will fill up a room quite quickly.

LOUCKS: What’s it like to experience that full effect of bear spray on your face or on your body?

You know, I’ve been pretty fortunate and never had that happen. But dealing with some patients – and you know, we were at the school here, just my crew on Wednesday, I guess it was, and it was outside, and these poor students, two of them, 17 and 18 years old (were sprayed). It’s painful on the eyes. You can’t see. Your eyes are watering. It’s tearing. The full effect is in about 30 to 45 seconds. It’ll take effect in about five seconds, but full effect is 30 to 45 seconds. You can’t see. Your eyes are watering. It’s very painful. You can’t talk. It gets into your pulmonary system, your lungs, and yeah, it’s very painful.

LOUCKS: And what’s the remedy? Do you just have to wait it out?

Yeah, time. We’re looking at 35 to 45 minutes for the full effect to be, I guess, released or not have any effect anymore. But we have what’s called sudecon wipes. So basically it’ll take the bear spray, the active ingredient, foam up a little bit, and we can wipe it away. The other good thing to use is baby shampoo, and dilute that with some water. That, again, will foam up. It’s easy on the eyes, easy on the skin, and that foam basically takes the capsaicinoids and the oil, and you can wipe that away. But the problem is then you have secondary contamination if you’re not careful with those wipes. So it is best left to a professional if you can, either Medavie or the fire department, and we’ll do our job. But if you’re at home, or, you know, Heaven forbid something happens in a mall, a little bit of baby shampoo goes a long way.

LOUCKS: Just add it to the little kit that you carry for all the other social issues you might have to deal with when you’re when you’re out and about these days. That’s just wild. And it must put just more and more pressure on our first responders, like yourself as a firefighter, and for our our ambulance people. Everybody knows you’re busy enough, and you think about the numbers of drug overdoses that we’ve seen in our cities over the past number of months, how are you guys able to cope with all of this?

I think we’re really supplementing Medavie as far as the fire department goes, and the police. The police are doing a fantastic job. It’s considered an assault, and they go and they clear the scene for us. They’re fantastic at helping us out with that. Medavie, you know, sometimes they’re a little backed up the hospital, but they get there, they will transport and help out. Obviously they’re the primary care givers with the sudecon wipes. We have them also, and so we’re there either to help ventilate or to do patient care. And we’re running all the time now. It used to be, you know, fires where the ladder was going. Now we’ve got ventilation with the ladder, bear sprays. We’ve got our engines running around trying to do overdoses, trying to do the bear spray stuff with patients. So, you know, it’s a busy time.

LOUCKS: Well, thank goodness there’s people like yourself that want to take this on as a career and do the great work that you do in our communities. What happens to these people if somebody walks in to a store or whatever and sprays? I’m guessing a lot of these are young people that are doing it. Are there any consequences, really, for them?

That’s probably a good question for the police. I can’t answer that. I just see the person maybe in handcuffs or somewhere else with the police, and what they do with them after, I’m not exactly sure.

LOUCKS: Well, I sure appreciate the info Jay, and I suspect there’s going to be some people maybe stocking up on the baby shampoo to carry along.

You bet. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to listen, and yeah, hopefully this helps the listeners.