NORTHAMPTON — City officials saw an unprecedented concentration of overdoses on Friday — six over the course of mere hours.
If anything good came of the outbreak, it’s in learning that the city’s growing response network is functioning effectively.
Director of Public Health Merridith O’Leary said she learned of the spike around 9 p.m. Friday when a call came from the city’s emergency management director. In turn, she hit the horn, calling everyone from District Attorney David Sullivan to Cooley Dickinson Hospital and first responders.
“Cooley Dickinson then reached out internally throughout all of Hampshire County so that they would be on alert,” she said. “Within about 10 minutes we really had the county covered.”
Police said none of the overdoses proved fatal, though O’Leary said at least one of the patients required three doses of Narcan to be revived.
O’Leary said this is the first time the city accomplished this level of outreach in such a short amount of time. This chain of communication was one of many topics that emerged in a meeting Monday the City Council Committee on City Services had with Sullivan, O’Leary and first responders.
While the meeting was planned before the weekend overdoses, they illustrated the need for solutions to the growing epidemic gripping the region and the nation.
In his three years running the detective unit, Detective Lt. Alan Borowski said Friday’s outbreak was the first time that many overdoses came “in that short of period of time.”
The first overdose call came at 2:08 p.m. Passers-by on the bike path near 80 Grove St. called to report a man who was slumped against a brick block, unconscious.
The second came at 2:09 p.m. at a residence on Marian Street when an overdosing man’s friend called for help. At 3:42 p.m., police were called to Hawley Street for a report of a man lying on a hill in a parking lot.
At 4:09 p.m., police reported to the Shell station on Pleasant Street for an overdose, though the man declined help. The fifth call came at 7:10 p.m. at Haymarket Cafe. It was unclear if the incident happened inside the restaurant or out front.
Police responded to a sixth overdose at 10:02 a.m. Saturday at a residence on Prospect Street. The man was given at least two doses of Narcan and eventually regained consciousness at the hospital, Borowski said.
Police said they are analyzing the contents of bags taken from the scene of the various incidents. Results are pending, but officials suspect a particularly dangerous strain of heroin was at fault for the weekend outbreak.
Liz Whynott, program director of the needle exchange run by Tapestry in Northampton and Holyoke, said this isn’t the first time this has happened.
Pointing to state data, Whynott said the number of opioid deaths is on the rise. In January, the Northampton Police Department received data showing the number of heroin overdoses in the city had nearly tripled in 2016.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a “statistically significant” increase in heroin overdoses in Massachusetts from 2014 to 2015. The number of overdoses grew from 469 to 634 which is more than a 33 percent increase, according to the CDC.
“There has always been, unfortunately, batches that have come up in the heroin supply,” Whynott said. “The public is finally paying attention and taking it seriously.”
Whynott said alerting people of an increase in overdoses is important news.
“It’s important for users to be able to get information and know what’s going on as quickly as possible,” Whynott said. “As public health agencies in the city responding to this stuff, I think trying to put out warnings that are geared toward heroin users would really be the right way to go.”
Sullivan told councilors during the Monday meeting that construction workers are more likely than any other workforce segment to be prescribed opiates after a workplace injury, and then get hooked. New state-level policies, he said, require opiate prescribers to enter a registry and place a 30-pill limit on most monthly supplies.
“It takes care of one end of the problem,” Sullivan said. “But those people who are already addicted — it’s not going to help them.”
As a result of the new policies, Sullivan said, people are turning from prescription opiates to street heroin at a faster clip.
“It’s the unintended consequence of regulation,” he said. “It’s a long-term investment. We’re going to have this problem for a very, very long time.”
Officials acknowledge it’s an uphill battle, but they’re not taking it lying down. Through the state-funded regional prevention coalition, Hampshire HOPE, the city plays a leading role in tamping down the epidemic in Hampshire County. To get out ahead of young athletes turning to opiates for pain management, O’Leary said, the agency built opioid training into youth sports requirements beginning in September.
The need for more education around the epidemic is clear, officials agreed.
“We just haven’t had that education in our society,” Sullivan said of the epidemic that claims 91 American lives a day — five a day in Massachusetts alone.
Last year, 28 Hampshire County residents died of heroin overdoses. Nonfatal overdoses, officials said, are much trickier to track. Still, it’s safe to say that for every one fatal overdose there are 10 to 15 nonfatal ones. Heroin claimed nearly 2,000 lives in 2016 statewide, according to statistics aired during the meeting that were obtained through the Massachusetts State Police.
City Councilor Marianne LaBarge wondered if the city is adequately stocked with Narcan, to which Deputy Chief of EMS John Garriepy said his team is well equipped at all times.
“I carry bottles of the stuff,” he said.
Nancy Cowen, owner of Happy Valley, said that as a shop owner she’s gotten to know many people who spend time downtown and use heroin. In the past couple of months she said she’s seen a significant shift in this population — there are a lot of fresh faces and they’re not from Northampton, but from Franklin and Hampden counties.
“These are more hard-core people than we’ve had on the streets before,” she said, requesting informational pamphlets to hand out to those who appear in need. “We seem to be attracting more of these users. We’ve all noticed.”
Store owners are an untapped resource, she said, because “we get into these conversations all the time.”
O’Leary said Hampshire HOPE is working on coordinating more Narcan trainings, as well as educational materials for parents needing to more safely store their medications. She also outlined the need for a citywide protocol on cleaning up used syringes. “An officer got stuck with a dirty needle about a month ago,” she said.
City Councilor Ryan O’Donnell thanked his colleagues for doing more than just talk about the issue.
“It’s something politicians pay a lot of lip service to,” he said.
Toward the end of the meeting, Councilor Dennis Bidwell asked what the City Council could do to help, to which Sullivan replied: “Keep supporting first responders.”
Lynn Ferro, coordinator for the district attorney’s prescription drug task force, added that the Northampton Recovery Center got off the ground in January with $3,000 in donations and is in need of a permanent, rent-free home. She said the new center runs almost entirely on donated materials, and recovery support comes from peers who are also in recovery. “It’s really a tremendous community effort,” she said.
Those wishing to donate to the center can do so Tuesday via Valley Gives.
“It’s all of us that can be part of the solution,” Sullivan said.