Fire department busy in third quarter

The third quarter has been exceptionally busy for the fire department and has included a variety of chimney and structural fires, Barrhead Fire chief John Whittaker says.

“I wasn’t able to come at the beginning of the month because to be honest, we were pretty much run off our feet,” he said. “If you’ve been reading the local paper, we’ve been pretty busy with a lot of fires this month — we responded to a total number of 45 calls, more than one per day, and our average for the year is currently sitting at 1.56 calls per day.”

Some of those calls, Whittaker said, were ambulance assists.

“The department has made changes to our dispatching to mitigate this issue,” he said, adding a lot of cases stem from out-of-town ambulance personnel calling for lift-assists in situations that do not warrant it.

“I believe these people are used to working with extra pairs of hands, especially if they come from bigger cities like Edmonton, but I’ve had conversations to ensure that this type of thing does not continue to happen.”

“We have no problem helping them out and working with our local ambulance service, but I would be happy if we didn’t have to respond to any medical calls period,” he said, adding all of Barrhead’s volunteer firefighters are qualified to perform emergency life-saving procedures in the same manner as emergency medical responders (EMRs).

“Our qualifications are, however, actually higher than those of an EMR,” he added.

Chimney fires led to some large dollar losses in the county.

“The end of October and the beginning of November saw several incidents in the county where structure fires caused some financial strain for some folks,” he said, adding cold temperatures have resulted in more and more people lighting woodstoves.

“It is to be expected but I can’t thank the two councils enough for coming together and putting the money forward for the ladder truck. It is definitely paying itself off.”

Whittaker said the first working structure fire for the T6 was at Slomp’s Dairy, which was reported on in the Barrhead Leader on Oct. 25.

“It worked spectacularly,” he said.

“There are some issues we’ve identified with respect to our whole group of vehicles but we are working to address them.”

Whittaker said the department could use more volunteers.

“Our compliment is just under 30 members right now but I would like to see us at 40,” he said.

“I find it a trifle frustrating that we don’t have the volunteer base but we all know the volunteer is a dying breed.”