Baltimore police and fire personnel respond to a mass casualty incident near the intersection of Pennsylvania and North avenues. Photo courtesy of Baltimore Police Department/X
More than two dozen people were hospitalized Thursday morning following a mass overdose event in Baltimore, officials and authorities said.
The fire department responded to a report of an overdose at around 9:20 a.m. EDT in the area of Pennsylvania and North avenues in West Baltimore, but when they arrived they were approached by residents who directed them to additional people found unconscious, fire chief James Wallace told reporters during a press conference.
When Wallace spoke there were only 15 known victims, five of whom were considered in critical condition, and he said he expected that number to increase. As of Thursday night, there were 25 overdose patients had been hospitalized. No deaths have been reported.
“This is a level-one mass casualty event,” Wallace said.
Col. Kevin James, Baltimore Police deputy commissioner of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, said: “We’re treating this as an active crime scene.”
The drug involved is under investigation but the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition has suggested the overdose was caused by a “bad batch,” urging residents to “test your substances,” “acquire from your regular source” and “don’t use alone and have Narcan easily accessible if you are using alone.”
The Baltimore Police Department and the Baltimore City Health Department were among the agencies that responded to the incident.
“The site remains an active emergency response scene. BPD continues to investigate the scene and surrounding neighborhoods, focusing on the source of the overdose event,” the mayor’s office said in a statement.
The Baltimore City State’s General Ivan Bates said he is willing to assist local law enforcement.
“Today’s mass overdose event at Penn and North serves as a powerful reminder of our city’s ongoing battle against the opioid epidemic,” he said in a statement.
BPD & @BaltimoreFire are on scene at the intersection of Pennsylvania & North Avenues in reference to multiple individuals experiencing overdose symptoms.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 727,000 people in the United died from an opioid overdose between 1999 and 2022.
There were roughly 82,000 opioid overdose deaths in 2022, and 83,140 in 2023, the CDC said. But opioid overdose deaths experienced a dramatic drop last year to 54,743.
In Baltimore, opioid overdose deaths experienced a high of 1,006 in 2021 and dropped to 895 in 2022 before going back up to 952 in 2023. Last year, there were 698 opioid overdose related deaths in the city, according to state data.
