Saskatoon's only supervised consumption site closing for 11 days to give exhausted staff a break

After a trying time on the front line of the recent overdose spike, Prairie Harm Reduction is temporarily closing its drop-in and supervised consumption site in Saskatoon.

In a social media post on Wednesday the non-profit organization said PHR staff need time to focus on themselves and the trauma of dealing with the overdose crisis head-on over the last few months. The site will reopen Mar. 31.

"It's not an easy decision knowing that there is a lot of fallout from us not being there, but I think people forget that the people on the front lines that are working through all of this, you know, we're human beings, too," DeMong said on a telephone interview with CBC on Thursday.

Saskatoon Fire Department has responded to more than 350 overdoses, including multiple suspicious deaths, since March 1, according to the Ministry of Health. 

Since Jan. 1, the fire department has responded to 696 overdose incidents or suspected opioid poisonings.

The overdoses require four to five doses of naloxone, and sometimes oxygen or paramedics to revive the victim.

In the social media post on the closure, Ashley Greyeyes, the drop-in supervisor at PHR, said marginalized people come to the safe consumption site for care, compassion and a chance to survive.

"The past three weeks have been brutal — unprecedented numbers of overdoses, some fatal. Just recently we found ourselves responding to six overdoses at once, a harrowing moment that left us drained and broken," Greyeyes wrote.

Last week, in light of the spike in overdoses in Saskatoon, the Saskatchewan government activated its Provincial Emergency Operations Centre (PEOC), which it says is meant to streamline communications between government and organizations.

DeMong says her staff works tirelessly to revive people from overdoses, but they don't have the proper resources to do the work, adding she's s made it clear to PEOC that they need boots on the ground there.

And while she appreciates the PEOC asking what's needed, Demong says it's come too late.

"I don't think they're actively understanding that reaching out at this point doesn't solve anything — that we needed support weeks ago when we started asking," she said.

Shawn and his wife Lucy, who were sitting outside PHR on Thursday afternoon, told CBC they don't know where to go now that PHR is shut down for the time being. The couple only provided their first names.

Shawn said the organization offers a multitude of services that he and his wife relied on.