Most of the weather-related ambulance calls in the extreme cold are about people not dressing warm enough. Medavie Health Services spokesperson, Troy Davies, says the cold weather came quickly after a warmer than average few weeks, and it seems to have caught a few people off guard.

The ambulance service has received on average a call a day related to the cold weather, and most are from people trying to get from point A to point B but haven’t bundled up, leading to possible exposure injuries from hypothermia, frostbite or frostnip, which is the first stage of frostbite. There have also been calls about homeless people who haven’t gotten to one of the emergency shelters.

Davies says the weather also affects emergency crews attending to calls. For example, responding to a car crash may be complicated because you are dealing with getting people out of the vehicle and possibly inserting an I.V., which means not being able to have your mitts on and it’s possible your I.V. fluid could freeze.