Filipino nurses shaken by deadly Vancouver festival rampage say tragedy 'will not define us'

Filipino-Canadian nurse Glesy Banton-Victoria says she had planned to attend the Lapu-Lapu Day street festival in Vancouver on Saturday, but took a nap instead, exhausted by a funeral earlier in the day. 

When she learned that a vehicle sped into a crowd of festival-goers at the Filipino community event, she says she was stunned by the horrific details, thinking, "Is this real?"

Banton-Victoria says she's seen many dead bodies in her job as a veteran emergency room nurse at a Surrey, B.C., hospital, but expects she would have frozen in place if she had witnessed Saturday's carnage.

"It hits home because it is home, the Filipino community," said Banton-Victoria, born in Legazpi, a city in the southeast Philippines.

Police said Wednesday that 11 people had died, including three members of a family from Colombia, while a 22-month-old boy was among three people in serious condition. Dozens were sent to hospital with injuries.

Banton-Victoria says she's thinking a lot about the victims, and the Filipino nurses she expects are providing them care. 

"If you're a Filipino working through those days in emergency, this is probably one of the toughest days of your life, seeing your community. [It's] almost like a violation of yourself, of your values," she said.

Mass casualty events such as these are already stressful for health workers suddenly pressed into action, but B.C. Nurses' Union president Adriane Gear says the alleged attack is especially difficult because so many Vancouver nurses are Filipino and may have had a personal connection to the festival tragedy.

Nurses and Nurse Practitioners of British Columbia said in a statement Monday that many members of the Filipino community were called to respond without knowing if loved ones were involved.

Gear broke into tears while noting that nurses who volunteered at the event told her they saw an SUV plow into the crowd before they ran toward the injured.

She said none of them were physically harmed, but she said she worries about their psychological health. 

"Vicarious trauma is witnessing human suffering, and nurses and other first responders, they do that all the time," Gear said.

"But there are situations that even [for] the most seasoned, it is just so difficult. And, this would be one of those situations." 

Just 24 hours after the tragic incident, B.C. Premier David Eby spoke about how every person in the province has been touched in some way by the Filipino care community.