By Andrew de Souza

Longer fire response times accepted to avoid liability

Mar 13, 2012 | 12:13 PM

The city has adopted a fire response time higher than the industry standard in order to avoid liability while plans for a new fire station are put in place.

On Monday, city council agreed to adopt a maximum response time of 9 minutes and 30 seconds, above the industry standard of 6 minutes and 20 seconds in order to be able to reach all areas of the city and avoid liability.

The suggestion was put forward in a report by fire chief Les Karpluk. He said the lower standard was needed because until a new fire hall was built, fire fighters simply couldn’t reach areas of the city fast enough.

“The concern that I brought forward is that we can’t get to areas in the city right now in 9 minutes and 17 seconds,” he said at the council meeting. “The 9 minutes and 30 second (limit) is to ensure that we’re covered from a due diligence and legal stand point until we can get a second station.”

City solicitor Ken Paskaruk said if the city could show on paper that it was unable to respond to industry standards but had its own, it was better than simply having no standards.

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Response time often below standards

In his report Karpluk said that the department had an internal standard of less than six minutes to respond for the purpose of data collection.

He reported that at that level, the fire department could only get to a call in that time in 43 per cent of calls. The worst response time was for Coombe Drive in the South East corner of the city with a response time of 9 minutes and 17 seconds.

“If no steps are taken to address the response times and these gaps are well known to civic administration, there could be cause for legal action against civic administration due to negligence,” he wrote.

Meanwhile the report also called for the city to reduce that time to the standard by 2020, mainly by planning, funding and building a new fire hall.

Plans for substations on the way

With the approval of the response time for the city, Karpluk said work was being done to show where to put between one and two substations in the city to provide adequate coverage.

In the past, a challenge had been staffing issues, since minimum staffing measures are required at all times in all stations.

In his report, Karpluk said solutions would be presented and plans ready by June 2012.

adesouza@panow.com