WESTLOCK - In years past, Fire Prevention Week would have been incredibly busy for Town of Westlock director of emergency management/town fire chief Stuart Koflick and Westlock County protective services manager John Biro, as well as many of the area’s firefighters.
In addition to promoting fire safety to children at area schools via tours of the fire safety trailer, which always included an appearance by Sparky The Fire Dog, smaller halls hosted Fire Prevention Week meet-and-greets with the public — Pickardville is still planning on an Oct. 31 Halloween-theme fire prevention event.
And usually on the last Saturday of the week-long celebration, the town would open the fire hall to the public. It was an event that always drew young and old for a chance to throw on the bunker gear, or douse a blaze with a fire extinguisher.
But due to COVID-19 none of that is happening this year — it’s just one of many changes firefighters have had to deal with due to the pandemic.
“It disappoints us and it disappoints the kids. We get a lot of traffic into the station and we’re able to provide a lot of fire safety information at those open houses. And it’s also a venue when we can try and recruit new members. But when you think about what we’re all trying to achieve and to do no harm, we certainly don’t want to be Ground Zero for an outbreak (of COVID-19) in the community,” said Koflick.
“But we’ve got a couple of things up our sleeves. We’re working with the schools … we’ve provided resource packages to them and we have a colouring contest planned for them. And during Fire Prevention Week we’re going to be doing some pre-recorded and maybe even some live stuff on Facebook based on this year’s Fire Prevention Week theme which is cooking safety.”
Firefighters, like police, paramedics and other first-responders, didn’t have the option of closing their doors during the pandemic.
Additional personal protective equipment, like masks and hand sanitizer, was needed, purchased and distributed to the crews. Ultimately, COVID-19 has added expenses and time to the job.
“So when we do get a call it’s not just take the trucks to the emergency and then come back, park the trucks and go home,” said Biro. “It’s disinfecting the trucks, wiping things down ... it’s just part of the process now.”
“We wear PPE within the trucks, we’ve restricted entry in the fire hall. Ultimately we’ve had to put policies and procedures in place and wear PPE for, I hate to say it because it’s the catch word of 2020, the new normal,” added Koflick, noting they’ve attended a few calls with the potential of COVID-19 exposure that turned out to be negative.
“But further to that because we’re a part of the official medical first-responder program under AHS ... we were contacted early on if we were comfortable with providing the same level or service or if we wanted to scale back our response to assist EMS. At the end of the day a decision was made to only assist EMS for certain types of calls — life-threatening or high priority calls.”
And despite taking as many precautions as possible, the chance of contracting the virus is always top of mind.
Early on in the pandemic, training sessions were held via Zoom, while since the restrictions have eased, members have been encouraged to follow all of the AHS protocols when they meet face-to-face.
“There’s always a concern for our membership as we deal face-to face with the public and not all of our members are young either. We don’t know who or what they’ve (the person we’re helping) endured, so it’s always in the back of our minds,” Biro noted.
“We’re just being more cautious. All we can do is trust our members (to follow COVID-19 protocols) and we do. And we’ve told them that if they aren’t feeling well, stay away and there’s no questions asked.”
“We need to protect our people because if we’re all sick, then who’s going to respond?” Koflick added.
“We’ve made sure that we looked after ourselves — in the early stages we cancelled in-person training and went to some Zoom training. And then when we were allowed to resume in-person training it’s all about maintaining social distancing, or wearing a mask when you need to. It’s added some extra steps and anxiety for some people and we’re still learning.”
