Dartmouth residents have safety concerns about fire service changes
Posted Jan 7, 2016 05:18:22 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
DARTMOUTH – About 175 people showed up to a community meeting in Dartmouth on Wednesday night to voice their concerns about proposed staffing changes at a downtown fire station.
Public safety was the number one concern of residents after Halifax Regional Fire Chief Doug Trussler proposed staffing the King Street station with volunteers on evenings, weekends and holidays.
The Chronicle Herald reports Joe Triff, a full-time firefighter and resident of Dartmouth himself, told the meeting other firefighters don’t agree with the proposal, that will mean more coverage from the Highfield Park station and others in the area.
“We don’t want to see the service cut. I live in Dartmouth. I don’t want to be going to work, knowing that my family’s not protected like they were last week.”
The King Street station is one of three originally slated for closure by Trussler, before Halifax Regional Council voted to keep them open last March despite evidence there were redundancies within the service.
Trussler than proposed the volunteer model.
Dartmouth-Centre Councillor Gloria McCluskey tells Global News the older buildings and number of seniors in the area forced her to vote in favour of keeping the King Street station open, something she maintains.
The Herald reports that Jim Gates, head of the Halifax Firefighters Union, told the meeting that Wednesday morning’s fire in Waverley was responded to by volunteers in 14 minutes, adding that represented a risk to public safety.
Gates said for every minute that a fire goes unchecked it doubles in size.
Trussler defended his plan to Global News as addressing an overlap of service in the area.
“We started out with our operational review, we took an in-depth look at all the services we provide and the level of service,” Trussler said.
“The overlap comes from Station 12 which is on … 45 Highfield Park Drive just off Victoria, Station 14 which is at the corner of Second and Walker and Station 15 which is on Pleasant.”
The King Street station, along with the Lady Hammond Road Station in Halifax and the Patton Road Station in Middle Sackville would be converted to E-Platoon stations, with Trussler adding that this is to ensure proper coverage.
“Any type of response that comes from those stations is basically more than we need, it’s a bonus, so by staffing it with E-platoon during the day and volunteers in the evening, weekends and statutory holidays, that’s a good, safe way to move forward.”
That would mean the stations were staffed by career firefighters from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday to Friday, with volunteers picking up the slack outside those hours.
“My home, my family and my neighbours are all serviced by volunteers and I have every confidence in the capability of those volunteers,” Trussler said.
Tim Rissesco, executive director of the Downtown Dartmouth Business Commission, organized Wednesday’s meeting and is also concerned with safety, given the old wooden structures in the downtown core, as well as the limited space between those structures.
Regional Council will further discuss the proposal next week.
