Lack of first responders 'puts the safety of the public at risk' in northern Manitoba city, captain says

High vacancy rates in Thompson Fire & Emergency Services are causing delayed fire and medical responses and putting the community at risk, firefighters in the northern Manitoba city say.

Thompson Fire & Emergency Services currently has a 20 per cent vacancy rate, they said.

"It's stretched very thin in Thompson," said Capt. Travis Mirus, president of the Thompson Professional Firefighters Association. 

"It puts the safety of our membership at risk and it puts the safety of the public at risk."

A full complement of staff in the service has 31 people — 24 fire medics, five people in dispatch, the deputy chief and the chief. The fire medics are cross-trained to staff both the fire trucks and the ambulances.

The team is currently down four fire medics, which Mirus said is almost an entire shift of crew.

Members are getting burned out, he said.

"We're barely halfway through the year and we have members that have worked the equivalent of eight extra weeks of overtime," he said. 

At least 42 times this year, one or more firefighters have ended up working 24-hour shifts, Mirus said. On Sunday, the on-duty shift responded to 23 incidents over 10 hours.

"That's not even becoming that abnormal anymore," he said.

60% more calls, no staffing increase

Chief Steve Molloy said relying on extensive overtime is the only way to ensure they have adequate staffing for each shift. 

He said three team members have totalled nearly 700 hours of overtime this year so far.

Every day they have overlapping emergencies and calls coming in that they can't immediately respond to, meaning response times are delayed.

While the city has a population of just under 14,000, it's a hub for the north and they serve up to 60,000 residents because of the outlying communities, Molloy said.

There's been a 60 per cent increase in calls over the past 10 years, but there has been no increase in staffing, he said. Last year, they responded to roughly 8,000 emergency calls.

The service has also recently lost a number of staff members who have been recruited to larger markets like Winnipeg, Brandon, Man., and Calgary, he said.

"They're leaving here with the invaluable experience that they've gained in a very short period of time, because these individuals are exposed to anything and everything," which he said is why they get recruited quickly. 

While Molloy is supportive, he said it often leaves the service struggling to fill vacancies. 

He said they need upwards of eight to 10 people on a shift to be able to run three ambulances fully staffed and have a crew for fire responses. 

More ambulances needed

Every month, there's an average of about 50 hours where no ambulance is available to respond to an emergency in the community because of multiple calls happening simultaneously, Molloy said.

"So we need more ambulances from the province. We need more staffing," he said.

A spokesperson for Shared Health said it is in discussions with the city regarding resources, and added completing a new service purchase agreement for emergency medical services in Thompson is a high priority for the organization.

Shared Health also recently completed negotiations with the City of Winnipeg to "ensure reliable and consistent delivery of emergency medical response, transport and community paramedicine services."

The spokesperson said the organization now looks forward to finalizing agreements with other municipalities in the coming months. 

Delayed responses

Molloy said Thompson Fire & Emergency Services is also struggling to backfill dispatchers when one is sick or on vacation, which sometimes leaves one of his team members forced to stay back to answer emergency calls. 

That led to a delayed emergency response to a boat fire on Saturday, when several emergency medical incidents in the community happened at the same time, he said.

Four out of five staff were already responding to two separate emergencies when the report of the fire came in. But because the last member on shift was unable to leave to respond to the fire, a general alarm was sent out to recall off-duty members and volunteers — which takes time.

Mirus said if there had have been a dispatcher on, the lone fire medic could have responded and sized up the situation.

If needed, the medic could have also started co-ordinating evacuations and even performed limited fire suppression if there were other emergency services members, like the RCMP, on site. 

In other circumstances, he said limited staff being spread out across several incidents could mean a team is responding to an emergency without a full crew. 

"Thompson is pretty much an island. The next closest fire departments are about 100 kilometres away," Mirus said.

"They only have one truck in each of those fire departments, so they can't just send their one truck to Thompson to help us, because they have to look after their own community."

Backfill help, training hub needed

The team would like to see the city of Thompson explore different options to backfill dispatchers and ensure there is someone on 24/7.

Fire chief Molloy said he'd also like to see a northern training hub opened in Thompson, similar to a public fire paramedic program in Brandon.

That kind of hub would be offered "to our communities here in the north, to people from the north, living in the north, wanting to work in the north," he said.

"That [way] we can hopefully slow down that revolving door."

Molloy said the idea was tossed around a number of years ago but never got off the ground.

He said starting that program in the north would be vital to train and keep people in the area who are already connected to Thompson instead of trying to recruit people from other areas.