Fire fight
Provincial rules could help protect unincorporated communities, former mayor says
Provincial rules could help provide fire protection for residents of unincorporated communities, a former mayor says.
Following last Saturday’s fire that demolished a cabin on the Witless Bay Line because the fire department in Witless Bay was unable to service the unincorporated area, it appears more legislation is needed to give municipalities the necessary guidance and/or decisionmaking power to deal with such situations.
“Legislation in Newfoundland and Labrador, like legislation in many parts of Canada, grants powers to council, but only very specific and limited powers,” says recently resigned Witless Bay former mayor Sébastien Després, who was reached by phone in New Brunswick, where he now resides.
Després had been mayor for just months shy of a full term when he resigned to operate a newly purchased business in New Brunswick. Després said he feels strongly about the need for better provincial legislation to support municipalities that are restricted from making this legislation themselves.
“The main issue is that municipal councils don’t have the permission to act,” says Després, who also notes that these same councils are often held to blame when things go wrong despite their reliance on the province to execute many of the decisions they would like to make.
For Després, it is not so much a question of giving municipal councils more power, but of addressing provincial inaction and creating legislation which empowers someone either on the provincial or municipal level to make the necessary decisions about complex legal and ethical issues such as the most recent fire.
The fire on the Witless Bay Line is not the first to take place in an unincorporated area. Two years ago the same thing occurred in an unincorporated area outside of Corner Brook where neither town nor province took action.
Després notes how situations like a fire can promote discussion around these issues, especially when there is the possibility that a repeat could result in the loss of life.
These tense situations also bring up legal and ethical issues regarding the responsibilities of municipalities to nearby unincorporated areas. Outside of insurance restrictions, it is unlikely — from a purely legal stance — municipalities would be liable for firefighters who are injured while fighting fires in unincorporated areas short of cases of gross negligence, giving them little reason to not send brigades, unless they lack the legislated power to make that choice.
The current lack of provincial legislation about how municipalities should deal with providing emergency services to unincorporated areas leaves residents of those communities often lacking the necessary information about the dangers of where they are living, and places towns in a problematic position.
“People making the decisions are making them in the dark,” Després says about the lack of information that municipal councillors, many of whom are volunteers, are operating under.
During his term as mayor, Després often saw that municipal councils were put in positions where it was out of their hands to act on an issue, but the province would provide no action or legislation and the issue would fall back on the council, which was incapable of taking action.
“The answer is simple,” says Després. “It’s to create legislation.”
But it must be good legislation that empowers the necessary individuals and councils to make decisions while avoiding significant loopholes, Després says, and foreseeing larger problems that could arise need to be addressed with urgency.
I write regarding your story “Cabin burns, fire department stays put,” Aug. 8 (http://bit.ly/2vf8dxq).
Does someone have to die for the province to act?
For years, towns across Newfoundland and Labrador have been asking the province to deal with the issue of fire protection for unincorporated areas. Instead, the province continues to do nothing, placing the onus squarely on municipalities, local fire departments and municipal councils.
Because of the province’s failure to create appropriate legislation relating to unincorporated areas, town councils across the province (including Witless Bay and Bay Bulls) are being made responsible for the awful decision of whether or not to send out their fire departments outside their limits of service when a fire breaks out.
This isn’t a trivial decision, since the lack of a legislative framework invites a series of questions without any answers:
• If a fireman/firewoman gets hurt while out on a call outside the limits of service, is the municipality who sent out its fire department legally at fault?
• If someone is injured in a cabin fire in an unincorporated area and a nearby municipality does not send out its fire department, is the town in question legally responsible? Is the town ethically responsible?
• If a fire breaks out inside a municipality while its fire department is out fighting a fire outside its limits of service, could the municipality be sued by its taxpayers, whose life and property are put at risk? Would its fire department be legally liable?
There are currently no answers to these questions, since there is no legislation in place protecting the municipalities in question or the people living outside their limits of service. The fix is an easy one: the province needs to stop sitting on its hands and make a decision. The options are quite clear:
Option 1: Everyone who owns a structure in an unincorporated area must pay for fire protection.
Option 2: No one owning a structure in an unincorporated area is eligible for fire protection.
Option 3: Individuals who own a structure in an unincorporated area must be allowed to opt into the nearest municipality’s fire protection program, at a rate established by the authority in question.
The province’s continued failure to create legislation to solve such problems continues to place municipalities and their councils at risk. When it comes to something as basic as fire protection, the risk is simply too great to keep ignoring.
Sébastien Després, former mayor of the Town of Witless Bay Shédiac, N.B.