Remote Response Vehicles Aid in Deep Snow, Backcountry Rescues
Winter hammered the District of Muskoka, a region north of Toronto, Ontario, in early December 2024. A blizzard dumped a staggering 55 inches of snow in a few short days, stranding motorists. Thankfully, help was on the way in the form of the Remote Response Vehicle (RRV) operated by Muskoka Paramedic Services (MPS) that blasted through the deep snow as if it wasn’t there.
“The RRV is a John Deere Gator utility vehicle that has been retrofitted to accommodate patient transportation needs,” said Jeff McWilliam, chief of paramedic services and emergency management for the District of Muskoka. “The front part of the unit is typical of a John Deere Gator. But the back part has enclosed patient transport capabilities with a stretcher. All the equipment that we would carry in an ambulance to treat patients—medications and certain trauma-related material—are all included in this RRV. It's pretty compact back there, but you can comfortably transport a patient lying down, which is sometimes completely necessary for you to do.”
As was proven during the recent blizzard, the RRV goes where regular vehicles cannot. This makes it ideally suited for the rugged and rural area that makes up Muskoka, which covers approximately 2966 square miles in Ontario, Canada’s lake region.
“Part of our coverage area goes into Algonquin Provincial Park, which we share with a number of other services,” McWilliam said. “The RRV helps us get into those trails, up to a certain point, when the tracks are on. You clearly could see during the snow event how useful the RRV was to get where we needed to go—not only on the highway where we could maneuver our way in and out of vehicles, but also to move on secondary and tertiary roads that were just impossible with vehicles due to the deep snow. In those situations where a regular ambulance could just not get through, we were able to deploy the RRV, grab the patient, and bring them out to the regular ambulance for transport to hospital.”
In the summer months, the MPS RRV swaps its tracks for rugged balloon tires, allowing the RRV to go where regular ambulances cannot reach.
Muskoka Paramedic Services acquired its RRV in 2023, after the town of Bracebridge endured a terrible flood. According to the District of Muskoka website, “In 2013, the flooding in Muskoka was called the worst in a century, but the 2019 flood water levels surpassed those from six years previous. There was no mid-winter thaw that year resulting in an unusual amount of snowpack, and combining that with significant spring rainfall, caused the flooding in 2019. Bracebridge, Huntsville, Muskoka Lakes, and the District of Muskoka declared states of emergency as the water levels rose.”
“That was a challenge for us,” recalled McWilliam. “We had to rely on not only allied agencies, but we also had the Canadian Armed Forces in here helping us. And we said, ‘that's crazy that we can't get to certain people in certain circumstances.’ So we came up with this idea of how we could get into places that are almost impossible to get to in these extreme circumstances by using an RRV, and that’s when we started to explore the purchasing of one.”
The value of the MPS’ decision was proven during this December 2024 blizzard. “At one part during the storm we had the RRV in the town of Gravenhurst, just responding to calls where there may be shortness of breath due to snow shoveling,” McWilliam said. “This is not something that people do every day, and when you get five or six feet of snow within a short period of time, you're working real hard. We had some calls for shortness of breath, we had some chest pains, some slips and falls, and some people that were anxious. So it was a bit of a charcuterie board of calls that we were going to with the RRV.”
One thing is certain: Converting a John Deere Gator into an RRV was an excellent choice by Muskoka Paramedic Services, “Yeah, we feel great about it,” said Chief McWilliam. “Before this vehicle arrived here, our paramedics and EMTs had to use snow shovels to get to people, which consumed valuable time and energy. But the most important thing is that our RRV is bringing the equipment and the people needed to treat those patients right to their side. So I think there's been huge value in getting our RRV, and our frontline staff appreciate it, as do the patients they treat.”
