With Squamish’s population growth, council is going to have to consider hiring more firefighters as early as next year, according to a fire department staffing report.
Council adopted the fire rescue service staffing growth plan, which lays out the service’s expected necessary growth, on Oct. 6.
Squamish Fire Rescue Chief Bob Fulton and deputy chief Bill Stoner presented the plan, which is an add-on to the Squamish Master Fire Plan, to council’s corporate governance committee on Sept. 29.
“Every master plan we adopt it helps guide us to make decisions in the future,” Mayor Patricia Heintzman told The Squamish Chief. “The fire master plan isn’t different, but it shows a commitment and understanding of the growing needs and gives us a blueprint or a strategy of how to get there, when we need to get there.”
Staffing for the fire department has stayed stable for a decade, the report states.
Three options are put forward for council to consider in terms of career firefighters: Maintain current staffing levels, which will mean a possible reduction in service to meet fire inspection requirements of the B.C. Fire Services Act; or hire one additional staff member; or hire two additional staff members to provide services of a full-time department 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
The report recommends a full-time fire inspector be hired in 2016, and a second member hired “in the near future.”
Currently the department has four firefighters, one captain and two chief officers working dayshifts Monday to Friday.
Firefighter overtime hours cost the district $68,000 in 2014 and $60,000 so far in 2015, the report states.
“Maintaining current staffing levels as the community grows will lead to decreased levels of customer service, personnel burnout and increased overtime hours,” the report states.
Firefighters are currently able to respond to fires within 11 to 13 minutes 70 per cent of the time, according to the report. With two additional members, the report predicts the department could respond in an average of seven to eight minutes 70 per cent of the time.
The department is behind on fire inspections of businesses. Only 285 of the more than 900 eligible properties in Squamish were inspected in 2014, the report notes.
Heintzman said most communities would like to do more inspections, but ultimately it is a business’s responsibility to follow the rules.
“Even the City of Vancouver is behind on inspections. It is a challenge.”
Fulton said Squamish department was doing well overall with inspections.
In the long term, the report recommends the district consider the need for 12 full-time staff when the community reaches 25,000 people and 16 when the community reaches 30,000 people. Squamish’s population as of 2014 was 19,031, according to the district’s annual report.
There is a fine balance council has to consider in growing the department, Heintzman said. “You want to grow with what you can afford to grow with,” she said. “We are getting at the point that I think council is going, ‘Yeah, I think we have grown enough, there is tax revenue coming in to be able to afford this,’ but you know the police wants a couple of more people too. We wish we had tons of money to put into this, but it is definitely something council is considering and the master plan helps us inform our decisions when the right timing is to go to the additional unit.”
A first-year firefighter costs the district about $93,000 per year, according to Fulton.
Heintzman said there is also a concern growing the department’s career force can be detrimental to the volunteer culture of the department.
“We have such a valuable volunteer force and it is valuable because there are these people who want to do this on a paid-on call situation, and it is fiscally very beneficial for the community… as we grow as a community, we want to keep our volunteers and grow our volunteers ideally and then balance that with a strong career complement.”
The report recommends a doubling of the volunteer force at Hall 1.
Fulton said volunteer firefighters will always be a big part of the Squamish Fire Rescue service.
