In Huntington, located along the Ohio River in the western portion of the state, 26 heroin overdoses were reported in just a four-hour period on August 15.
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Cabell-Huntington Health Department Director Dr. Michael Kilkenny said that West Virginia’s problem with heroin overdose is “an epidemic of monumental proportions”.
“We know through informant information that when something like this hits the streets, it draws like flies to sugar”, Chief Joe Ciccarelli said.
Merry said that eight of the victims were saved through opioid-overdose-reversing drug naloxone and others were revived by a manual resuscitator called a bag valve mask to stimulate breathing. “I do not know what it was laced with, but I would love to know at this point”, Cabell County EMS Director Gordon Merry said.
Numerous overdoses happened in an area surrounding a single apartment complex in the city, leading officials to believe the overdoses were connected to one batch.
Merry said it sometimes took more than one Narcan dose.
“We had a half-hour span where we had absolutely no trucks to send in the county”, Cabell County EMS assistant supervisor David McClure said. The calls overwhelmed EMS responders.
It’s been estimated that fentanyl, the drug singer Prince reportedly overdosed on, is about 80 times more potent than morphine and hundreds of times more potent than pure heroine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Beginning at about 3:30 p.m. Monday, 27 people overdosed within the next five hours in Huntington, a city in Cabell and Wayne counties that rests on the Ohio River.
At a news conference at Huntington police headquarters the day after the city saw an unprecedented amount of OD’s, officials say their resources were stretched to the limit.
Merry emphasized that the area is trying to resolve the drug issue: “We have not buried our heads”. “We really must stop the demand side of the equation”.
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Officials in Huntington are warning people about an especially risky batch of heroin after emergency responders responded to more than two dozen reported overdoses within a four-hour span.
