By Thia James

Fire chief touts second station during service review

Mar 8, 2013 | 11:28 AM

Prince Albert Fire Department chief Les Karpluk reiterated the need for a second fire station during Thursday`s fire and emergency services review.

He also pointed to the higher-than-industry standard wait times, specifically for areas outside of its six-minute response area. Parts of the West Hill, West Flat and East Hill fall just outside of the six-minute response zone. Industry standards are set by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).

“City council sets the level of service. You determine the level of service,” Karpluk said. “What I`m telling you is, the standards that we follow, we`re clearly not even close to meeting them.”

The NFPA develops codes and standard practices and is staffed by experts. And its standards are what the fire department will be measured against in the court of law, Karpluk said.

For example, fire trucks would currently take more than seven minutes to arrive at Coombe Drive. The industry-accepted standard is a maximum of four minutes travel time.

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At the same time, more new residences are using lightweight wooden trusses in their construction. A truss is used as part of the supportive frame of a structure.

Lightweight trusses that are unprotected fail quicker than solid wood ones, meaning injuries are more likely.

“This stuff burns hot, it burns fast. Is it a concern for the fire service? Absolutely,” Karpluk said.

Mayor Greg Dionne asked Karpluk if implementing a bylaw requiring sprinklers for new buildings built with these lightweight frames would mean a third fire hall, in West Hill, wouldn`t be needed. “Even though our time to get there will be faster, sprinklers will kick in,” he said.

Karpluk said they will have to go through the provincial ministry of government relations because sprinklers are not a requirement in the building code.

And with the potential for fires to become deadly within three minutes during a flashover – where household items get so hot they ignite, almost like a fireball – Karpluk said this is why the service wants to make it to calls in less than four minutes.

Outside of the meeting he said response times to areas outside of the six-minute response zone couldn`t be shortened.

To this end, the fire service and the City of Prince Albert is looking at building a second – and possibly a third – fire hall to better serve areas outside of the zone.

The proposed new location would be at Marquis Road and 15th Avenue East, which is currently privately held.

“It`s absolutely ideal,” the fire chief said, and added “We`ve done some timed runs.”

The proposed new hall would better serve the expanding residential area east of Carlton Park. Existing staff would be split across the two stations, and two firefighters would be hired. It also wouldn`t involve the purchase of new trucks, as those would be split between the existing hall and proposed fire hall as well, Karpluk said.

“We`re going to make it work,” he said.

Coun. Rick Orr proposed building the new fire hall on land the city already owns, which sparked a brief debate about the location of the new hall.

But a proposed new fire hall is still in the “concept” phase, Karpluk said after the meeting.

A capital request for $193,000 for fire station drawings is in the general fund budget for 2013.

Against the backdrop of the service review, the fire service is dealing with the rising cost of labour.

Labour – salaries, pensions and benefits – accounts for nearly 88 per cent of its budget. On top of that, the department exceeded its budget for overtime pay by $60,000. That was mainly due to crews responding to fires in the RMs and the length of time they spend fighting the fires.

“We`ve got to talk about the genie in the room and it`s arbitration. Once we start negotiating in courts, we can`t do anything about it, it`s there,” said Orr at the end of the meeting. “The genie has to be talked about, we can`t continue. We need to work with our union. We need to come up with a way to control and curb our costs.”

He added the city has to come to grips with how it will handle this, since there`s only a certain amount of dollars to work with. The city has brave people fighting fires and protecting citizens, Orr said, “But we can`t do anything about these costs unless we come to terms with figuring out a way of working with our people to come up with ways of solving it.”

Fire service round-up

Among the statistics presented during Thursday`s review, were numbers that show the time lost to injury dipped to 336 hours in 2012, down from 494 the year before.

And call volumes fell modestly to close to 1,000 calls in 2012. That`s down from 1,064 in 2011.

A five-year average of call types show that less than 100 were for structure fires. Another 175 were related to vehicle accidents and 204 calls were false alarms.

Between 2008 and 2012, 30 per cent of calls to the fire department were made between 5 p.m. and midnight.

“Basically, you know what, we`re busy at all times of the day,” Karpluk said.

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames