The story behind Ottawa's firefighting calendar

The Ottawa Fire Department (OFS) has released a calendar with some of the crew having babies.

It is the first time in many years since the agency launched such a project. But unlike previous years, this calendar has a special story behind the photos.

Fire at Ottawa General Hospital

It was October 27, 2023 when the repair of a transformer at the The Ottawa General Hospital led to a Code Orange – a fire – just before 4 p.m

Although a fire in a hospital is always treated with attention, this incident in particular will go down in history.

Despite the fire being small and quickly contained, additional firefighters were urgently called to the hospital due to a partial evacuation, with some evacuees including vulnerable babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and women in labor.

Smoke from the flames worked its way through the floor and the hospital’s emergency power supply began to run out.

“You worry about that in hospitals. You already have people who are sick, and then the smoke spreads through the hospital and when you think about little, tiny NICU babies, it doesn’t take a lot of smoke to get into big trouble,” said Nick DeFazio, media relations officer at the fire in Ottawa, CityNews told Ottawa in an interview.

At Station 23, Brendan White said his team was called to the hospital around noon to bring spare equipment, flashlights, generators and water. Just as the incident seemed to be resolved, White and crew were needed again.

“We were all called back because they needed manpower to move people, and they realized they were going to run out of standby electricity,” he said.

When crews responded, the usually bright, stark hospital was lit by battery-powered lights and the smell of smoke wafted through the building. They were asked to climb the stairs to the eighth floor.

“It dawned on me on that first flight up the stairs when we got to the delivery because that’s exactly where my daughter was born,” White said. “So we walked through the same waiting rooms and everything I had seen three or four years earlier. It was definitely a surreal moment.”

The task was to carefully transport 17 NICU babies down the stairs, while attached to many machines, 600 meters across the quad to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). In addition, crews had to move four pregnant women and several others who had just given birth.

White credits the collaboration and how calm everyone remained to the hospital staff, who he said “were the real heroes” in this story.

The most vulnerable babies had a stretcher with a firefighter, a nurse and in most cases a respiratory therapist at each end, White recalled. The process was lengthy and required a transfer at the bottom of eight flights of stairs and a wait for the specialized equipment to return from CHEO.

“We could really only move one kid at a time,” White said.

‘Walking across the floor, not knowing what was going on’

One of the seventeen babies who had to be moved that night was Randi Saunders’ son, James.

At the time of the incident, Saunders was sitting in her Carleton Place home anxiously waiting on the phone for updates on what was happening.

“On the night of the fire, we went through our normal routine of calling to say goodnight, but there was no answer, and there was always an answer,” she told CityNews.

‘Weird,’ Saunders thought, knowing she would call back.

“I think I called a few times and they didn’t answer, and then they finally answered,” she recalls. “But when the nurse answered, it was, ‘We’re dealing with an emergency. Your baby is doing well, and we will contact you soon’…CLICK.”

Saunders and her husband’s thoughts were “spinning.” They tried not to panic, not knowing what had happened hours earlier and what the situation was with their three-week-old son.

After a two-hour wait, Saunders called the unit back, but received no answer. Then her husband looked at his phone and the couple realized there was a fire.

“We’ve been pacing all night and they don’t call us. We’re scared, but we don’t want to drive them crazy with phone calls,” she said.

It wasn’t until 1 a.m., when the two were awake in bed, that they heard about the evacuation. That’s when Saunders said she broke down.

“I was just so scared because he’s so little and they’re evacuating,” she said.

It was then that Saunders remembered the care it took to move James every day, the machinery and processes to ensure he stayed safe.

‘Now they are going to evacuate to a completely different building. And it just drives me crazy because we’re always afraid that we’re going to lose him at any moment.”

What the family didn’t know was that White had carefully brought their little baby down the stairs.

“I distinctly remember each baby having a barcode on them so they knew who they were. And I remember looking down and seeing ‘J’ on this sticker,” he said.

In that case, White took in the “massiveness” of the moment and wondered who the baby was before refocusing his mind on the task.

A reunion months later

Naturally, the evening ended successfully.

Anyone who had to evacuate the building was taken to CHEO or other hospitals. In the weeks that followed, DeFazio, the media relations officer, said the incident so affected the firefighters that it created a special bond between everyone involved.

The idea for the calendar came from the hospital staff.

DeFazio said he thought the idea was “unique” because of the story behind it. From there, one of the doctors coordinated information between the families of the NICU babies, asking if they were interested.

“The families were great. We did the entire photo shoot in one day. One by one they came in. And I mean, the babies were amazing,” DeFazio said.

The project was a group effort, with local photographer Ashley Metzger, and the publishing house, by DEFINITELY prints and images in Orleans, done for free. This would allow all proceeds to go back to the NICU and the First Responders Foundation.

As for Saunders, one of the special moments was being able to meet White afterwards and thank him.

“(When he) walked in, I gave him a big hug, and he gave me a nice card and a medal for Jamesshe said.

The decision to create the calendar was based on the knowledge that one day the family would be able to tell the story of how James was in the NICU.

“That he grows up and looks back. What an incredible story and memory for him,” Saunders said.

And who knows, it’s possible that one of those seventeen babies will one day become a firefighter.