Part one of a series on concerns with rural and remote firefighting
It took about 30 minutes for 9-1-1 dispatchers to find a fire department willing to respond to the recent structure fire in Timber Bay.
“They tried fire departments within about 100 miles of Timber Bay to get somebody to respond,” said Duane McKay, fire commissioner for the provincial Ministry of Corrections, Public Safety and Policing.
This is part of a larger problem across rural Saskatchewan — small communities that don’t have the capabilities to fight fires themselves have trouble getting others to respond.
“Usually it’s not the fire department that doesn’t want to respond. It’s the people that operate the fire department, that pay the bills, that say, you cannot respond outside our area unless we give you permission to do so,” said Richard Kent, commissioner of emergency and protective services with the Prince Albert Grand Council.
In the case of the Northern Hamlet of Timber Bay, they don’t have a fire department and aside from that the Mayor declined further comment.
On May 4, 9-1-1 dispatch received a call that a house in the community had lots of smoke visible, but not flames.
“The caller advised that everyone was out of the house,” McKay said.
The dispatcher called the RCMP because there was no fire coverage in the area. They then started looking for a fire department.
“The second call came in and identified that the house was fully engulfed in flames and that there was possibility two people inside,” McKay said.
There were two people — Aaron Halkett, 32, and Carmella Halkett, 37, died in the blaze.
Fire departments in the surrounding area include Montreal Lake Cree Nation and Lakeland & District Volunteer Fire department, but it was Buckland Fire that eventually responded to the call. Initially they didn’t want to go.
“It’s out of our area and we will not respond there because it’s not in our area and the time factor,” said Jim Miller, Buckland’s fire chief.
It would take more than an hour to respond, which means they might not be able to do much, but when they learned there could be people in the house, the department set out.
“We value the individual highly. We’ve learned over the years that even if the person is deceased, they still deserve their dignity and we believe it’s our job to try and help them as much as we can.”
It’s hard for Miller to say whether or not they would have been able to retrieve remains that night, as they never did arrive at the fire.
“They were called off before they arrived … because the fire was basically done before they got there … burnt itself down to where there was no use of them responding,” McKay said.
It was two Ministry of Environment forest firefighters that lived in the community that used their pumper trailer to prevent the fire from spreading into nearby forest.
Under current legislation, municipalities are fully responsible for any fire in their community, said McKay.
“That’s the way the legislation reads right now and it’s unfortunate. The municipalities have the sole responsibility to provide fire protection in their communities and make arrangements with their neighbours if need be,” he said.
Timber Bay’s immediate neighbour Montreal Lake Cree Nation responds to structural fires on the reserve only, said Norman Ross, executive assistant for the band.
“It’s frustrating to want to respond to that kind of call, but again it’s out of our jurisdiction,” he said.
Under rural and remote conditions it’s unlikely a mutual aid situation will be set up because they won’t be able to share services, so instead they rely on help from further away.
“There is an expense and those expenses have to be borne by the municipality that calls them,” McKay said.
And if the community can’t afford to pay, it causes trouble.
“Then you get the situation that you currently have, which is a reluctance to respond,” he said.
The province is aware of these problems and a committee was been assembled about three years ago to work towards a new system.
Each fire shows the importance of getting a new system in place, said McKay.
“This is just a really unfortunate incident and we see them all too often, where small municipalities do not have the capacity to provide the levels of service that they need in order to protect their citizens,” he said.
“It really speaks to the need of having an overarching grid of public safety to ensure, if nothing else, that the prevention materials and activities are in place and in these cases somebody will respond to assist.”
For more: Going up in Smoke: working towards solving the fire response problem
Going up in Smoke: changing role of fire department
ahill@panow.com
