Snuff them out

At last Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett is taking steps to prevent the tragic house fires that have been occurring with unacceptable frequency on First Nations reserves.

The minister told the Star’s Jesse Winter and Alex Boutilier on Tuesday that she has committed to creating an indigenous fire marshal’s office, improving the tracking of fire-related data on reserves, and creating new legislation governing fire protection and prevention services on First Nations across the country.

The welcome promises, made in response to a recent report from the Aboriginal Firefighters Association, cannot be acted on soon enough.

A Star investigation found at least 173 people have died in house fires in First Nations communities since 2010. At least 25 of the dead are children.

One of them was 6-month-old Amber Strang. She died along with eight others from three generations in a house fire on the Pikangikum First Nation in northern Ontario just over a year ago.

Like many casualties of house fires on reserves, she was the victim of a broken system. When fire erupted in her home, the community’s only fire truck did not have water and could barely travel over frost-buckled roads. Nor was there a fire hydrant for the truck to hook up to when it arrived at her home.

Such failures are endemic. In 2013, a house fire took three lives, including two children, in Wunnumin Lake First Nation in northern Ontario. That community had no fire service at all.

In 2014, four people died in a fire in northern Ontario’s Mishkeegogamang First Nation. The water in the fire truck there was frozen because there was no heated building to store it in.

The chance of dying in a house fire on a reserve is more than 10 times higher than in the rest of the country.

Bennett’s three new commitments to stopping fires on reserves are only the first steps. As the above examples so bleakly illustrate, Bennett must also resolve the lack of infrastructure, equipment, and firefighting manpower on reserves.

That will take time and money. Indeed, the president of the Ontario Native Fire Fire Fighters Society expects it will take 15 to 25 years to bring fire services in Ontario’s First Nations up to adequate levels.

“It’s sad that you have to stand back and watch a burning building and hope nobody is in there,” Steve Nolan said. “If that happened in mainstream society? Joe and Mary Taxpayer wouldn’t have it.”

He’s right. It should never have come to this. Now Bennett has to fulfil her first three promises as quickly as possible — then move onto the bigger picture investments that are needed to put an end to this tragic failure.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett is finally taking action on the crisis of on-reserve fires