Fire chiefs provide reports at qathet Regional District meeting

qathet Regional District directors heard from four regional fire chiefs, who provided quarterly updates on their departments’ activities.

At the July 9 committee of the whole meeting, Lasqueti Island Volunteer Fire Department fire chief Richard Carlson, Savary Island Volunteer Fire Department fire chief Chris Philpott, Malaspina Volunteer Fire Department acting fire chief William Ashworth, and Northside Volunteer Fire Department fire chief Jim Brown all appeared before the committee to provide information about department activities during the year.

First to speak was Carlson, who said the fire department has had 17 incidents year-to-date and has conducted all its practices and training events. He said the department conducted automobile extrication training this year, as well as emergency traffic control. There have been recent false alarms on the island, which Carlson said is beneficial because they are not critical incidents.

Philpott said there had been two structural fires, one rubbish fire, three first responder callouts and three false alarms.

“The numbers are pretty low but I can assure you that the population is ramping up rapidly, as well as the traffic, as well as the hooligans and everything else that goes with it,” said Philpott. “We are buckling down and bracing ourselves for another busy summer. We’ll see what happens.”

Electoral Area A director Jason Lennox asked with the seasonality of population growth on Savary Island, was Philpott happy with the department’s numbers? Philpott said he had a very good crew and that he was happy with the crew.

City of Powell River director Rob Southcott asked if the helicopter landing site on Savary was operational. Philpott said it is fantastic, but there has been an ongoing battle with the provincial ministry of transportation and transit over access on the west side, which is bad.

“We don’t know what the resolution could be,” said Philpott. “The landing site is clear and safe, but our only issue is access to the west.”

Ashworth said he has been acting as fire chief for the last 14 months and is awaiting direction on who is going to be the fire chief.

“We do need that direction eventually,” added Ashworth. “We’re still struggling to get everything done.”

Ashworth said there are 36 volunteers on the roster and 27 have attended training in the last quarter. He said only 11 volunteers are above 60 per cent turnout.

“We are having an issue with retention and morale,” said Ashworth. “Of the 11 volunteers, myself and two officers are attending regularly. We are also struggling to meet the demands on our calls.

“Medical calls are usually okay, but if we get anything more serious, like a motor vehicle incident or a structure fire, we are often struggling for resources, and we are occasionally needing to call in for mutual aid, which has its own costs as well.”

Ashworth said there were 73 incidents, with an average of four volunteers per incident.

“That’s not too bad, but we had six structure fires, two rubbish fires, a vehicle fire, three unclassified fires, 45 first responders, three ambulance assists, two motor vehicle incidents, two rescues, eight public service and a false alarm,” said Ashworth. “What it compares to in our previous quarter is we are up about 20 per cent on call volume overall. We’re up on call volume over last year and we’re down on manpower.

“That is going to potentially take its toll, but we are trying to work on that on how to move forward and provide training opportunities and to increase morale. We are working as a team.”

City director Cindy Elliott said 11 volunteers are turning out 60 per cent of the time or more and she wondered what would be an optimal number? Ashworth said the number should be around 24.

Ashworth said the fire hall is classified as full service, which means the capacity to enter into a building that is on fire and possibly perform a rescue.

“As it stands now, there is no way we are entering the building,” said Ashworth. “Eventually, when we get a whole crew there, we need to have between eight and 12 firefighters before you think about opening up a door. Otherwise, you’re on the outside of the building conducting an exterior operation. We are almost restricted every time to an exterior operation.”

Brown said Northside has 39 volunteers and 26 of them attend 60 per cent of training. He said there have been 14 fire practices and nine other training events, including first responder driver training, live fire training and cross-cultural training with Tla’amin Nation. He said there have been some new people showing up to volunteer for the department, and training has been undertaken with the new trainees.

Brown said a new fire truck, almost the same as the vehicle it is replacing, will be here by the end of the month or the beginning of August. He said he has gone to see it and it is a nice unit.

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