Halifax Fire making progress improving response times in rural areas
Posted Oct 21, 2020 10:15:00 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency says it is making good progress in improving response times for rural area fires.
In January, Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency implemented a new supplementary response protocol that effectively sent full time firefighters from 24 hour stations to help volunteer firefighters in close areas.
HRFE assistant chief Chuck Bezanson says with help from this year's budget, they made Station 45 in Fall River a 24 hour station.
“What we did is we made it a zone pumper, so effectively it responds to any calls in zone 4 as one of the first out vehicles,” he said. “What that does is it puts people on the road quicker.”
He says given career firefighters have a quicker turnout time, they can quickly come assist in neighbouring stations when needed.
“So we know that the volunteers have a turnout time in the evening of roughly six minutes but we also note that our career firefighters are trying to hit a target of 90 seconds out the door and if they're in the station 24 hours and they're out the door in 90 seconds, that allows them to be very close behind their volunteer partners in other stations,” he said.
He says they're also moving toward the same model in Sheet Harbour which should be implemented by June 2021.
