The Halifax Fire Fighters union is calling for change after 10 trucks were busy with training on Thursday.
Brendan Meagher, union president and captain at the Bayer’s Road Fire Station, said training is important. Crews and trucks are often busy with training, but there’s never so many on a single day.
“We have advocated and asked our employer for years to proactively call in off-duty personnel to make sure that we have adequate staffing in place, or as close to adequate as possible, when apparatus are tied up for training,” said Meagher.
“They have consistently ignored our requests to staff appropriately while training, and what we see today is an exasperation and what I would consider irresponsible depletion of our available resources.”
If 10 trucks are busy, that means about 40 firefighters are busy as well. That’s slightly more than a third of their available fire fighters, which is about 103 for Halifax every day.
Technically they can still answer calls, but he said any delay is significant because it means fires have more time to spread and do damage before enough fire fighters are on scene.
He said they need multiple trucks for each fire call, and when backup is coming from a few districts over, it creates a risk that the union couldn’t remain silent about.
The unavailable trucks include: 4E, 6E, 8 Tact, 11T, 45E, 15E, 5Q, 12E, 12A, 12 Tact.
They released a photo showing which stations have trucks out of service are busy with training. There are eight red markers, representing the stations affected. But at Station 12 in Highfield Park, Dartmouth, there are three trucks unavailable for calls.
The above map shows which stations have trucks that are unavailable. There are eight red markers, with three trucks unavailable at the Highfield park station, bringing the total to 10 trucks. (Halifax Professional Fire Fighters union)
Force already under staffed
Meagher said they usually send 14 fire fighters to initial high rise calls, but the industry standard is 43 fighters. Meagher said the fire chief advocates to city council to get more funding, but they are “already so far behind in our urban response capabilities.”
But he said management has ignored those considerations, leaving stations “bare bones” on a day like Thursday.
Firefighters typically work 24-shifts with 72 hours off. He said there’s always crews on their middle day off who can be called in for overtime to backfill when other fire fighters are busy with training. In 2000, the union agreed to only pay them regular rates for overtime as a concession to make sure there were enough staff on duty, he said.
At the time they were closing stations for days at a time, he said.
Even with those changes, Meagher said the fire service management is not doing enough to backfill and make sure there are enough fighters on duty.
“This is compromising the safety of firefighters and is compromising public safety.”
Our newsroom has reached out to Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency for comment.
