The scope of the nation’s opioid crisis hit home aboard the Bay Area’s largest public transit system, when first responders recently deployed anti-overdose medication to three different BART passengers on the same day, according to police logs.
Narcan — the device that delivers the opioid antagonist naloxone, which reverses the effects of overdoses — was used on three men over a period of six hours on Dec. 22.
The first call came in at the 24th Street station in San Francisco at 4:35 p.m. BART Police officers were on patrol in the Mission when they were dispatched to a man on board a train who was unresponsive. Officers determined that the man was overdosing and administered two doses of naloxone. The man was taken to the hospital for further care, police said.
Just after 10 p.m., another person was discovered unresponsive and determined to be overdosing at the Coliseum station in Oakland. The man was given one dose of naloxone and taken to the hospital for further treatment.
Then at 10:28 p.m. at the Civic Center station in San Francisco, staff at the station found a man lying unresponsive on the platform who appeared to be suffering from an overdose, police said. Officers responded and deployed Narcan, then emergency medical personnel arrived and took over life-saving measures. The man regained consciousness and then ran out of the station, BART Police said.
