posting for Merrick on "Rd position and consequences of going it alone"

At the meeting on Monday night March 2 Shelley asked me to post something indicating the consequences of withdrawing the FD from the RD and doing it ourselves. I've rummaged thru my emails and will cut and paste this one from Ryan Thom that clearly outlines where he's coming from. I personally think that going it alone is a non-starter, we may be ambitious and ingenious, but the rules and regs don't change, we have a small volunteer pool, and fund raising would have to compete with the Last Resort, etc. I also think it is unfair for the Board to expect us to come to such a decision in 2 weeks and will carry on trying to convince the Board to give us more time.

Hi Merrick – I’ve attached some documents to help answer some of your questions below. The first document is the BC Office of the Fire Commissioner’s Training Playbook, released last fall. (You’ll recall we brought this to a rural services committee meeting before Christmas) While the public should be glad to know that this document has been well-received by the small departments around the province as it is actually a step away from the “one size fits all” mentality of the former OFC training standard which was unachievable by smaller departments. Now we can train our smaller rural fire depts. to the exterior operations standard and be confident that our service is meeting the accepted standard.

However, for anyone contemplating starting their own new fire service they should be aware that all structural fire services in BC must meet this same criteria – the OFC still is the authority regardless of whether the fire department is run by a local government or a society. I’m not sure that the general public will be interested in all the NFPA standards in the Playbook, and to be fair it’s a little hard for the lay person to comprehend all that these standards entail, but I think the Compliancy Checklist on page 21 of the Playbook is interesting for showing the public as it makes it pretty clear that the OFC expects the same standards regardless of whether local government or a society runs the fire department, including supporting bylaws/constitution, policy statements, WorkSafe BC coverage, training and personnel records.

So if anyone is thinking that you can run your community’s fire/rescue service below the accepted standards in this province they should consider what liabilities they would be taking on.

The OFC Playbook speaks only to firefighter training on the operational fire ground and does not intend to speak to the numerous other aspects of operating a fire service, including First Responder services, rescue services, and of course fire dispatch standards. For the current fire dispatch discussion there are also NFPA standards that are the accepted standards to allow a metre against which the service can measure its liabilities. I’ve attached a good document by the Capital Regional District when it reviewed the fire dispatch services within its region (includes dispatch for several small fire depts such as Saturna Island, Shirley, Port Renfrew…) . If you go to section 3.1 Service Standard you’ll find there is a very good description of the current dispatch standards – our current system on Lasqueti cannot meet these standards. NI 9-1-1 fire dispatch service does meet these standards and by extending this service to Lasqueti we’ll be able to focus on the delivery of the fire service and not the dispatch part of the service.

I spoke with the Fire Chief in Fort Nelson recently – that corner of the province is served by Northwest Tel and their infrastructure does not currently allow for them to receive 911/fire dispatch – their council has been working to try to make this service a possibility but in the meantime the Fort Nelson fire department delivers this themselves – their Chief explained that they do this by paying for a firefighter to be in the hall 24/7 to answer the phone. This is a costly route for them to maintain their own fire dispatch and he still has concerns since on their own they still cannot meet all that a recognized dispatch service can provide.

It should be noted that the Lasqueti Fire Service operations bylaw, adopted 10 years ago, states in Schedule D, among the fire department’s administrative responsibilities:

Preparation of specifications for new communication systems and additions to existing communication systems which are compatible with NI911 dispatch services.

So this 9-1-1 development and implementation is in fact consistent with the current bylaw.

The 2008 Fire Underwriters Survey study is important again as it is not just about achieving insurance grading – this is also a detailed review of the Lasqueti fire service against these same standards (NFPA, Worksafe…) and again these same standards would apply to whatever organization runs the fire dept, so I believe we need to pay attention when this document from a recognized reviewer of fire services provides recommendations such as the four recommendations that would be corrected by proceeding with the NI 9-1-1 implementation. See the attached FUS study for details.

Also, I think as Al said in his email, running a small fire department is a particularly hard challenge with volunteer societies – maintaining insurance and finding the funding for capital investments as well as just the ongoing operations (I work frequently with our PR Search and Rescue Society – their President has commented how wishes they were included in a regional service since, as a society they must spend a significant amount of their members’ time fund raising which takes time and energy away from training and other aspects about SAR operations).

In the past year the Regional District has been able to look for efficiencies by virtue of our management of several fire services. We have begun implementing the records management system as required by the OFC Playbook and instead of each fire dept having to buy this whole software package we have achieved financial savings by buying one PRRD records management system that each of our 4 fire depts. can log into. (We will begin implementing this with Richard later this year). We were also able to transfer two quality fire trucks from Northside and Malaspina without the LVFD having to go to bid for them against other purchasers and as a result acquired two quality apparatus for $20,000 (this isn’t going to be the answer for all our apparatus needs but Richard and I feel this is a step in the right direction). Malaspina also donated a box of older pagers to Lasqueti to help mitigate some of our concerns with initial pager costs. So while each service in the PRRD is funded individually, I believe we will be able to keep finding these efficiencies by working together within the PRRD and finding economies of scale.

I believe when the Board decided to hire me in late 2013 to manage our fire services that the goal was to begin providing recommendations to this Board to chart a course that will ensure our PRRD fire services attain and maintain the minimum acceptable standards – we are still a ways away from bringing the LVFD to the minimum standard but it is achievable. And to not do so might put our firefighters our Board and our public at risk.  

It’s an exciting time in the fire service in BC – there are a lot of challenges in all communities meeting public needs, meeting acceptable standards, and still living within our means. We can look right next door to Hornby - The recent failure of the Hornby Island Fire Department’s Alternate Approval Process to borrow $1.6 million toward a $1.8 milling fire hall (+ $100,000 in gas tax funding and $100,000 from reserves). Had the project gained elector approval the CVRD had projected a net tax increase to the average property owner at approximately $24 per year. There are several other recent AAPs and referendums in neighbouring communities and while many are approved (ie Northside Fire Dept in 2010) the fire service often has a hard time adequately explaining to the public the need to invest to maintain this service.

I’ve had plenty of experiences where I’ve seen the public in situations with house fires and other emergencies and at those times it’s usually very obvious to the recipient of the service the value that this local service provides, and in an isolated community like Lasqueti I think this service is even more valuable.

 

Sorry if this is too much info for the list, please edit and put it up on lasqueti.ca if it's too long moderators, Thanks, Merrick