Code Orange
The Humboldt Broncos bus accident rocked the hockey world and beyond. What role did alumni in the Saskatchewan Health Authority take in the face of the tragedy?
By Ashleigh MatternApril 6, 2018 is not a day anyone in Saskatchewan will soon forget.
Sixteen people died and 13 were injured in a collision between a bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos hockey team and a semi-trailer truck. The crash shook the entire Canadian hockey community and beyond.
Especially in Saskatchewan where hockey ties run so deep, most people remember where they were when they heard the news.
Heather Miazga (BSN'85) heard first through her husband, who had received a text from a fellow hockey dad.
There had been a crash, and it was looking like mass casualties.
“Almost as he was reading that out to me, I got the call,” Miazga recalls.
She is the director of surgical services for the Saskatchewan Health Authority, and was on call that week for any clinical leadership advice needed, but the call came from the emergency preparedness director.
“The minute I landed… the charge nurse for the emergency department already had the emergency preparedness manual out,” Miazga said. “As I’m still getting my feet on the ground, they had already started thinking through the processes.”
Miazga and her family knew some of the people on the bus. Her oldest son had played for the Humboldt Broncos previously. Her younger son had played with some of the players as well.
“Saskatchewan is small,” she said. “We know the hockey world.”
But she had to put those emotional ties out of her mind to do her work.
Read more in the latest issue of the Green & White.