CBRM councillors call for thorough review of fire departments, equipment and staffing

Councillors in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality have called for a full review of volunteer and career fire services over concerns about the number of departments and the cost of staffing and equipping them.

This week, Coun. Gordon MacDonald called for a thorough review following talks over a lengthy list of issues raised at last week's meeting.

"We know through our discussions at the committee of the whole last week that there are many deficiencies and inefficiencies happening in fire services," he said Tuesday.

"We've really got to start identifying where these issues are, what [are] the issues that they're causing to fire services, where the resources are needed the most [and] how best we are able to get those resources to protect the citizens of the CBRM."

Last week, the Glace Bay volunteer fire department threw up its hands and ceded budgeting of its operations entirely to CBRM's fire service. 

At the same time, the municipality's fire chief and deputy chief warned council that more than 20 fire trucks in various stations across the municipality are nearly 25 years old and are about to reach the end of their useful life and could cost at least $20 million to replace.

Council also heard from the regional fire chiefs association that volunteer ranks are getting desperately slim.

Councillors unanimously agreed to have the chief administrative officer conduct a review, but they did not set a timeline on the review or determine how it should be done.

In 2016, CBRM commissioned a consultant to review the fire service, resulting in what's known as the Manitou report.

It recommended centralizing control and funding of the entire fire service and eliminating some stations, but that has not happened.

Deputy Mayor Eldon MacDonald said that report would be a good starting point.

"We need to provide our services [as] fast and efficient to our residents as possible and currently that's not happening and that review is much needed," he said.

Two stations in Sydney are staffed around the clock by unionized career firefighters.

CBRM also has 32 volunteer departments throughout the county. Three of them — in the former towns of Glace Bay, New Waterford and North Sydney — are considered composite stations that are owned and run by volunteers but also have a full-time career firefighter on hand around the clock.

Fire service officials say the rising cost of firefighting equipment and vehicles has made it unaffordable for many volunteer departments to operate as they used to, citing that as the main reason Glace Bay handed its budgeting over to the municipality.

CBRM does provide grants for equipment and vehicles, but Deputy Chief Craig MacNeil said a basic truck now costs around $900,000 without the modifications required for local equipment and needs.

He would not say that CBRM has too many departments and vehicles, but he has been asking volunteer departments about the possibility of downsizing the fleet.

List of pressures going to province

"We have 130 pieces of equipment right now in CBRM," he said. "That's the exact same amount of equipment [Halifax Regional Municipality] has. We have a lot of fire trucks and a lot of fire stations."

MacNeil said even if a 25-year-old truck still runs, the insurance industry considers it as being at the end of its life, and keeping it in service could cost the municipality and property owners more in insurance premiums.

Council has not decided how it will handle the 22 aging vehicles but has agreed to review and consider the list, and Mayor Cecil Clarke said it will be added to a list of financial pressures that CBRM intends to take to the provincial government.

The overall review is also expected to consider volunteer numbers, which are a concern as well, Westmount fire Chief Rod Beresford told council last week.

Beresford, who chairs CBRM's association of regional chiefs, said even in departments where numbers are higher, the volunteers are not all fully trained.

In Westmount, a suburb on the opposite side of the harbour from Sydney, only one volunteer works in the area during the day, Beresford said.

And a neighbouring department with more volunteers does not always have a fully trained complement, he said, so backup firefighters might be able to arrive on scene with a truck, but might not be trained to fight a large structure fire.

That's why he asked for and got approval for an automatic response from career firefighters in Sydney for any call involving a possible or working structure fire in Westmount's territory.

Meanwhile, a provincewide review of fire governance that's also underway is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

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