Five emergency room closures in northeast B.C. last month

Updated 9:36 a.m., March 4th: A previous version of this story included a mathematical error in the total number of emergency department closure hours. In February 2025, Northern Health facilities were closed for a total of 61 hours, not 51 hours. The story has been corrected and Energeticcity.ca is happy to set the record straight.

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. – Northeast B.C. residents were left without access to their community’s emergency department for 61 hours in February due to staffing challenges at Northern Health-operated facilities. 

The Chetwynd General Hospital emergency department closed two times last month for a total of 31 hours. 

The closures were caused by ‘staffing challenges,’ according to Northern Health, and had the emergency department closed from 2 p.m. February 25th to 8 a.m. February 26th. Later on February 26th, the hospital closed again overnight at 7 p.m., re-opening at 8 a.m. on February 27th.

This was a decrease compared to January, when the emergency department closed four times for over 73 hours. 

The emergency department at the Dawson Creek and District Hospital also closed twice in February, for a total of 20 hours, due to staffing issues. 

The first closure ran from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. on February 19th, and the second, was announced just two days later, running from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. on February 21st. 

In January, the Dawson Creek emergency department only closed once for nine hours. 

In Fort Nelson, the Fort Nelson General Hospital also suffered an overnight closure of its emergency department. On February 11th, Northern Health announced a closure stretching from 9 p.m. that evening to 7 a.m. February 12th, also due to staffing challenges. 

While the Fort St. John General Hospital’s emergency department remained open throughout February, a warning was issued on February 13th due to “higher-than-normal patient volumes.”

So far in 2025, the five communities in northeast B.C. have experienced 10 emergency room closures for a total of 141 hours.