Building care in a remote community – Island Health
January 28, 2025
For more than 75 years, a tiny island in one of the most remote regions of British Columbia has served as a vital lifeline for fishers, forestry workers, adventure tourists, and residents of the primarily Indigenous community of Kyuquot. Okime Island — one of approximately 10 densely forested islands surrounding the isolated village — is a beacon of care and community in this wild west coast region of Vancouver Island.
Okime Island is the site of a Red Cross outpost health centre, and just offshore is the dock for the helicopters, planes and boats that transport patients. The dock, which is owned by Island Health, “is the only point of contact to that particular outpost hospital,” explained Island Health’s North Island Facilities, Maintenance and Operations (FMO) Manager, Tom LeMesurier. “Anybody brought in by air or boat, anybody brought in for treatment— it could be a marine incident, it could be a logging incident — they would attend to at that dock.”
The west coast of Vancouver Island is infamous for its powerful storms, so it’s no surprise that a weather event limited the dock’s functionality. “In January 2023, there was a significant storm swell that damaged the dock to a very precarious level,” said Tom. “It was determined at that time both by our contractor and by the helicopter pilots themselves and the facility that it was no longer safe to land a helicopter on that dock. It listed to a point where it was just too dangerous to land a helicopter on. We were one storm swell away from that dock entirely disintegrating.”
Read More: https://www.islandhealth.ca/news/stories/building-care-remote-community
