HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — EMS personnel in Cabell County received over 25 calls in three hours for opioid overdoses, testing the limits of local emergency resources.
The overdoses happened throughout the city of Huntington between 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Monday.
While overdose calls aren’t rare in Huntington, Cabell County EMS Director Gordon Merry told ABC 7 News that his department usually receives only 20 overdose calls each week.
Cabell County EMS called in additional paramedics to help treat the patients, and were able to revive all 25 people who overdosed.
Merry suspected that a stronger cut of heroin may have caused so many simultaneous overdoses.
West Virginia shares a border with Ohio, where users have begun mixing their drugs with an elephant tranquilizer that is 10,000 times more potent than morphine. Overdoses in the region are at an all-time high.