© C.M. GUERRERO.Capt. Tony Milan, a battalion commander for City of Miami Fire Rescue, upper left, works on an overdose victim in Overtown last month.
Opioid addicts are overdosing in staggering numbers across Miami-Dade County — and the 'hot zone' for the growing epidemic is the streets of Overtown.
On a sunny morning late last month, a 43-year-old homeless woman named Mary crumpled to the sidewalk along Northwest 17th Street, vomit smeared across her T-shirt and hair. Within minutes, Miami Fire-Rescue paramedics injected her twice with the life-saving antidote known as Narcan.
As they lifted her still-unconscious body into the ambulance, a telltale sign was revealed. On the sidewalk lay a silver burnt spoon used to liquify the powder heroin.
Mary was lucky to survive, and
stories like hers have become increasingly common for overwhelmed first responders on the frontline of South Florida's opioid crisis. Newly released statistics show that in the first nine months of 2016, the Miami Fire-Rescue stations in the neighborhood used Narcan nearly 1,000 times - n
early double the rate of last year.But they don't always make it in time.
Since 2015, at least 31 people have fatally overdosed in Miami's Overtown neighborhood with
heroin or fentanyl - often, both - in their blood. That makes it far and away the deadliest zip code for opioid deaths in Miami-Dade County. The city of Miami itself accounted for nearly a whopping 43 percent of all 236 county overdoses recorded since 2015.
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