Content warning: this story describes the events that occurred on April 26, 2025, following the vehicle attack at the Lapu Lapu Day Festival in Vancouver and may be upsetting for some. Please take care when reading.
On April 26, BC Emergency Health Services recognized the first anniversary of the attack at the Lapu Lapu Day Festival in Vancouver. As reflect on this solemn day, we remember all those who lost their lives and wish for peace and healing for the surviving victims, as well as all the families, friends, community members, first responders, health-care workers and others whose lives were impacted by this terrible event.
As the worst incident of its kind in the city of Vancouver’s history, the attack at the Lapu Lapu Day Festival also prompted one of the largest emergency responses in BCEHS history. Paramedics and dispatch staff handle life and death emergencies every day, and they have training to prepare for large-scale emergencies, however, no one is ever truly prepared for a tragedy on the magnitude of what happened in Vancouver on April 26, 2025.
Vancouver Coastal South Clinical Operations Director Katryna Bowland-Kwok was not working that night but was on-call. She had just put her young children to bed when she got an initial text letting her know about an ongoing incident at the Lapu Lapu Day Festival. In addition to further calls and texts to her work phone, Katryna’s personal phone started buzzing with messages from paramedics she knew telling her how serious the situation was.
Advanced care paramedic Tanya Hisch and her partner had just been cleared from another event when they got the call to go to the unfolding incident. Primary care paramedic Eliza Rideout and her partner were getting close to the end of their shift and were in the midst of dropping off a patient at the hospital when they heard about the incident. They quickly handed their patient over to hospital staff and headed to the scene. As they both headed towards the festival, they began to hear reports over the radio from paramedics on scene about just how serious things were.
Katryna, Eliza and Tanya would all be part of a massive emergency response that included nearly every ground resource BCEHS has at its disposal in the Lower Mainland. Ultimately, over 40 BCEHS vehicles responded to the scene including 22 ambulances staffed by primary care paramedics, ten ambulances staffed by advanced care paramedics, critical care paramedics and Infant Transport Team members, advanced care paramedic response units, paramedic specialist response units, link and referral units (vehicles that transport patients with less urgent health needs who can walk on their own), equipment supply technicians and multiple supervisors and other BCEHS leaders, some of whom weren’t working that night and responded in their own vehicles.
The on-scene response was supported by many other professionals working across the province, including emergency medical call takers who spoke to the 911 callers, emergency medical dispatchers who directed ambulances to the scene, Patient Transfer Network staff who coordinated the movement of patients between medical facilities after they were admitted, members of BCEHS’s Disaster Risk, Recover and Resilience (DR3) team who helped monitor system capacity and ensure the organization continued to function well during the response, and many other staff and leaders working in different support roles across the organization.
In her role as the director responsible for the area, Katryna didn’t go to the scene herself, but worked to coordinate the overall response, ensuring the paramedics who were on scene had all the support and resources they needed.
When Eliza and Tanya arrived at the festival, they both found a chaotic scene.
“There were a lot of people wandering around, looking dazed and wondering what to do,” Eliza said. “A lot of people seemed very lost.”
Tanya was one of the first paramedic crews to arrive. Tanya and her partner cared for a critically injured patient that night.
When Eliza arrived later on, the paramedics, police and fire crews on scene had organized a pathway for ambulances to line up and receive patients. Paramedics had also grouped patients according to how serious their injuries were, so crews could work on getting the most critical patients to the hospital as quickly as possible. Eliza and her partner treated and ultimately transported two patients with non-life-threatening injuries. As she worked, she was struck by the poignant sight of festival goers searching the area for loved ones who they’d been separated from in the chaos.
Although all three women have responded to very challenging events in their careers, none of them had ever been part of a response to such a tragic, complex and large-scale incident.
“While we’re all trained to respond to mass casualty incidents, none of us want to attend an event like this,” Katryna says. Nonetheless, in the moment, they all relied on their preparation and experience to do what needed to be done.
“I think what stayed with me the most from that night is that it was a privilege to be there and help those people. That’s why I chose to do this job,” Tanya says.
From her perspective, watching the overall response unfold, Katryna saw how staff across BCEHS rose to the occasion when it was needed most.
“In my opinion, the way that our paramedics showed up that night, the way that supervisors showed up, the way that the call takers and dispatchers conducted themselves, the way that paramedics who were off duty were calling in coming into stations to relieve the crews who were attending the call…we couldn’t have asked for a better operational response.”
As the immediate response started to wrap up, Katryna’s thoughts turned to supporting all the paramedics who had responded to the call.
When the crews finished dropping off patients, they gathered at BCEHS station 248 on East Cordova Street for a debriefing session.
“We took the whole ambulance bay and allowed people to eat and drink just to have some time,” Katryna says. “Then we had a bigger conversation around acknowledging what happened and that what they experienced was a tragedy and that it wasn’t normal, and that they needed to take time process, whatever that looked like for them.”
All the paramedics, emergency medical call takers and dispatchers involved in the response to the Lapu Lapu Festival attack received support from BCEHS’s Critical Incident Stress Management program, a peer-based program that allows staff who’ve experienced challenging incidents on the job to have conversations with fellow frontline employees. The Critical Incident Stress Management program also offers the option for follow-up counselling with psychologists.
With support from colleagues and family, Katryna, Eliza and Tanya all continue to serve the public in their roles at BCEHS. Although they all live with heartbreaking memories of the events April 25, 2026, they also noted that they saw the best parts of humanity on display that night as well.
Tanya says, “I think my strongest memory of that night is probably that despite all that the Filipino community had seen, the horror happening to their friends and families and neighbors, when we arrived on the scene everyone was trying to help other people.”
In the aftermath of the Lapu Lapu Festival attack, members of the Filipino community who work at BCEHS gifted artwork, pictured above, to the organization as a thank you to everyone who was involved in the response. The art was created and donated by local Filipina-Canadian artist Kaira Peña. You can read a full description of the meaning of the piece below.
In a letter to the BCEHS community that accompanied the artwork, the staff members wrote:
“In the face of fear and confusion, you responded without hesitation. You arrived as though you had been there all along – calm, focused, and unwavering. You brought not just your skill and training but deep compassion. Amidst the chaos while others were still trying to understand what was happening, you ran towards the crisis, bringing light to one of our darkest moments.”
Read more about Katryna, Tanya and Eliza in this news coverage of the first anniversary of the Lapu Lapu Festival attack:
