WPFA Reacts

Monday, 11 November 2013 at 06:30

The Woodstock Professional Firefighters Association has concerns over the Fire Service Report presented to City council last Thursday

Would you be willing to pay $2.04 a month to ensure the City stayed at 48 full time firefighters?

That's what the Woodstock Professional Firefighters Association suggests a household pays per month for four firefighters based on current city budget numbers.

This comes after a steering committee recommendation to City Council Thursday suggested the City go from 48 to 44 full time firefighters.

President of the Firefighters Association Chuck Newton tells Heart FM the City's Chief and Deputy Chief presented their own report to council earlier in the year.

"They were directed by council to do this report and the Chief's staffing recommendations were for us to go to 14 guys on duty and this steering committee is recommending going to 11 so there's a 3 person difference there between our Chief and Deputy and the steering committee so we don't understand how our Chief and Deputy recommend going to 14 and all of the sudden the steer committee recommends us going down to 11."

Newton says the association is on board with moving the Parkinson Road firehall to James and Springbank but he says you still have to have to resources to fill the station.

He says he has great concerns over a recommendation to go from two to just one fire truck at the Parkinson Road hall.

"They're talking about taking a front line truck out of service, the aerial truck. When you take an aerial out or a front line service then you're dropping our level of service. We have policies in the department on what our limitations are that we can do so when we get the fire call we may be now limited to either a limited rescue or a limited firefighter, we can't combine the two of them."

Newton says the recommendation also goes against a clause in the firefighters contract which states each of the three trucks has a person in charge of it and Newton says the department would be hard pressed to take one of those trucks out of service because he says you can't have two officers on one truck.

Another major concern the association has is the recommendation to eliminate the fire department from responding to shortness of breath calls.

"There's the Bysham Park EMS station and the Mill Street EMS station so they both would be driving right by the Van Ave hall if they had to go to a call on the other side of Pittock for a shortness of breath. So our concern is we're already on duty, we're already getting paid and working, why would they not use us as a resource to get out there if somebody's having a shortness of breath out there? We can be there in less than a minute."

Newton says the report wasn't all bad, he says some of the recommendations the association agrees with include a dedicated on-call response vehicle for the Deputy or Chief, the addition of a second Fire Inspector as well as the expansion and inclusion of live fire training components and formal training facilities.

Newton says several association members are expected to attend council's next meeting November 21 when they will be going over the recommendations in the report.