The Ice Storm of 1998 will long be remembered by residents of the Ottawa region. The freezing rain began on January 4 and just kept falling. A state of emergency was declared four days later. The damage was “unimaginable,” according to Bob Chiarelli, who was chair of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton at the time, and across North America there were several deaths from fire, hypothermia, falling ice, and carbon monoxide poisoning.
But one community member, who lived alone and was rescued from a freezing house, was revived by medical personnel at The Ottawa Civic Hospital.
Their core temperature had fallen to 20 C, which is “virtually incompatible with life,” according to Kathy Slattery with the Civic’s Emergency Department at the time. A normal core temperature is 37 C.
Staff at the hospital used a warmed saline solution, inserted through a catheter into the stomach cavity, to warm the patient from the inside, while balancing that with the fragile state of their heart. Thankfully, this approach worked, and the patient recovered.
