The Barrhead Fire Department (BFD) and its firefighters are doing an exceptional job.
That was the consensus of both town and county councillors during a discussion about the Barrhead Fire Services 2017 budget at the joint council meeting on Nov. 30.
Town Coun. Don Smith said having a quality fire department comes at a cost.
“I think the fire chief (John Whittaker) and the deputy chief (Gary Hove) and the whole gang have done an exceptional job over the last year, under some very trying circumstances,” he said, noting the department has responded to upwards of 400 calls. “It is unbelievable that in the town and county of Barrhead we are getting that type of call volume and I just can’t say enough about the job they are doing.”
County Coun. Darrell Troock agreed, saying many of those calls are medical first responders.
“I know there can be a debate to whether or not they should respond to those calls, but I can tell you from experience, if it were not for them my wife might not be here, because it was that serious of a call. As someone who has received the benefit of those first responders I can tell you it is well worth the costs for the service we get.”
Barrhead mayor Gerry St. Pierre said his only concern is that the ambulance service could be taking advantage of the fire department and calling them when it isn’t necessary, noting fire chief Whittaker is working with both the ambulance service and the emergency dispatcher in an effort to eliminate being called out when they aren’t needed.
Smith added Barrhead isn’t the only community having that issue.
“It’s happening right across the province. We, through the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA), have made it quite clear that we would like Alberta Health Services to start reimbursing municipalities for being first responders for ambulance calls.”
St. Pierre said he hopes the province does something soon because if something isn’t done to eliminate fire departments responding to calls that should be strictly the domain of ambulance crews, they risk firefighters burning out.
“If we burn out our volunteer firefighters, fire services are going to be handled by full-time paid employees and it is going to cost everyone, including the provincial government, more money,” he said.
County reeve Doug Drozd agreed, giving the example of Wandering River.
“Over time those firefighters just burned out from all the calls they had to go out on and they just stopped going out,” he said. “And if something isn’t done maybe other areas are going to be without a fire department.
Troock added the province needs to address the issue, saying as a stopgap measure a type of transfer system could be established where patients going from one medical facility to another could be transported using something other than the ambulance service.
“Our fire chief gave us (county council) an example where he assisted the ambulance service on one of these transfers and it took 10 hours until he could return to Barrhead because they (AHS) kept rerouting the ambulance,” he said.
