BARRHEAD - The lack of in-person training for firefighters was cited as a concern at the Woodlands County council meeting on April 6, as one councillor who also serves as a volunteer firefighter warned that some members of his local department were in danger of losing their certification.
The issue was raised by Coun. Dale Kluin, who is also a member of the Fort Assiniboine volunteer fire department and had been discussing the problem with other firefighters.
He said that “a lot of money” had been spent over the past number of years in order to get several members of the Fort Assiniboine department certified to offer training to their own department and run courses for other departments as well.
“It's a big cost savings as opposed to doing it online,” he said.
Even though their hall is large enough to accommodate social distancing and firefighters were going out on calls together, Kluin said it had still been over a year since they had run any in-person training courses, and as noted earlier, that was putting those certified firefighters in danger of losing that certification.
“Our fire season is now here. We need to get back ASAP to doing what we need to be doing,” he said.
On a related note, Kluin also pointed out that there had been three fatalities in the Fort Assiniboine area over the last three months. (He did not specify the cause of these fatalities.)
Normally the department would get together after responding to such an incident to decompress and have a group discussion, but that had also not happened.
“That’s not good for this department. That’s not good for the community. I would like us to get back to what we should be doing,” he said.
Chief administrative officer Gordon Frank said that, in accordance with the county’s COVID re-launch plan, they were adhering to all requirements under the provincial regulations.
While weekly practices had been suspended, fire departments have been allowed to take any courses identified in their budget via online methods, he noted. Controlled burns are also allowed if departments deem it necessary.
He said they were considering allowing firefighters to resume in-person practices that were subject to additional protocols, but there was a potential concern around the recent spike in COVID cases within Woodlands County and the County of Barrhead.
(Notably, this discussion also took place prior to the announcement on April 6 that Alberta would be rolling back to Step 1 of the four-step re-launch plan due to a rise in COVID variant cases.)
Coun. Dave Kusch weighed in at this point to say that they had to find some way of allowing in-person training to occur.
He asked if there was a possibility of getting the fire chiefs to come up with a plan for resuming in-person practices in accordance with public health guidelines.
Frank responded that they were going to take another look at the situation following the long weekend and then send out an e-mail to fire departments once he had a discussion with the manager of protective services.
After some back-and-forth discussion, mayor John Burrows then made the suggestion of having the manager of protective services look into the issue and see if in-person training can resume.
To that end, council unanimously voted to pass a motion to have administration set up some kind of plan to do in-person training.
