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A senior Ottawa fire department official admitted yesterday it “didn’t occur” to him that water sprayed on children at Petrie Island beach on Canada Day was contaminated.
“It never even occurred to us,” said Irvin Sunstrum, sector chief. “We just set things up like we always did.”
Sunstrum and a handful of volunteer firefighters have been heading down to Petrie Island beach for several years for Canada Day. The firefighters use hoses for a variety of water games for the kids, and this year was no different, except for one thing—the water sprayed on the kids for at least three hours was being pumped directly from the Ottawa River.
That’s the same water which has had consistently high levels of E. coli bacteria since a faulty sewer gate resulted in nearly one million cubic metres of human fecal matter to enter the river in 2006 and eventually settle along the beach 10 km downstream.
WATCH FOR SYMPTOMS
Parents who are concerned about whether their children were exposed to the bacteria should be on the lookout for symptoms such as a skin rash, discharge from the eyes or diarrhea.
“The risk of exposure in this case was very small,” said Dr. Nadine Sicard, associate medical officer of health for Ottawa Public Health. “It’s unlikely anyone swallowed enough of the water to cause a gastrointestinal infection.”
E. coli bacteria can incubate in a person’s system for up to a week after exposure.
“We would never do anything to endanger people,” said the chief. “As soon as we were made aware of the situation, we stopped pumping water from the river and began using water trucked in from municipal water systems.”
Ottawa Sun