‘Tough decisions’ for fire services
City councillors receive long-awaited fire master plan
A blueprint for fire services in St. Catharines for the next 10 years was presented to council Wednesday night.
The long-awaited fire master plan deals with immediate and future needs, including the likely possibility that St. Catharines is growing vertically and will eventually have more high rises than it does now.
Acting fire Chief Jeff McCormick said the plan is supposed to be “flexible and nimble.” It’s a guideline for council, which plans to form a committee to deal with the implementation and review of it.
“For the next 10 years, things are going to change. Priorities are going to change. Needs and circumstances are going to change,” McCormick said during the special meeting at city hall.
“So this blueprint is something that council can work with and the committee can bring back recommendations as to how they feel is best to move forward with this plan to provide the most effective services we can in our community.”
The plan was two years in the making by a fire master plan committee made up of members of fire services, city staff and Cppouns.Jennie Stevens, Bill Phillips and Sandie Bellows.
The committee looked at public education and prevention, fire safety standards and code enforcement and emergency response. It came up with 16 recommendations.
They include that the city hire a community emergency management co-ordinator by 2020. McCormick said it’s not necessarily the fire department that should be in charge of that.
The committee also suggests increasing the number of firefighters by 16 over four years from 2021 to 2024. The additional personnel would allow the service to deploy an aerial truck at all times, which McCormick said would be necessary with higher buildings when the development landscape changes.
“If we have a fire in a highrise building, it really doesn’t matter whether we have 100 fires in a highrise building over the course of the year or we have one, we must be able to have the resources in place to deal with that one fire if we’re going to be effective and efficient in extinguishing fires,” McCormick said.
Another recommendation is that the city consider renovating the downtown fire station to allow an aerial truck to fit into the bay at some point.
Italsorecommendsanewfiretraining tower be constructed by 2019 to replace the current 1974-built structure which is out of service.
Suggested hirings include a fulltime dedicated public educator for the fire prevention division in 2018 and the possible hiring of a full-time person in fire prevention dedicated to reviewing sites and plans with planning and building services.
The committee also recommended assigning a fire prevention officer to each platoon and hiring another training officer.
Some recommendations cost no money.
The committee suggested the city’s current response time, set by council, of five minutes be changed to the industry standard of six minutes 20 seconds. St. Catharines firefighters currently respond within five minutes 90 per cent of the time.
It also recommended updating the services provided by the department in a bylaw.
Annual fees for services, software needs and administrative workload should continue to be monitored.
Council received the plan Wednesday night and directed the fire department to hold a public meeting about it. The department will consider the public’s input and bring the information back to council.
Council also dissolved the master fire plan committee and will strike a new committee for implementing and reviewing the plan.
McCormick said the fire master plan committee looked at addressing legislative and regulatory requirements and evaluated current and future risks. It determined where the department is now and where it needs to go over 10 years.
He said the committee identified gaps and the 16 recommendations are based on those gaps as of today.
McCormick said the plan takes into account the community’s ability to fund and support the level of service, keeping in mind its taxpayers who fund the service.
“There’s no question council has some tough decisions now and over the next 10 years.”