Canyon-Lister Fire Department Chief Glenn Guthrie says an “automatic aid” agreement for fire protection is a big step toward a valley-wide fire department.
“It is a benefit to every resident in the service area,” he said. “We now have more resources coming to every fire and it’s of special value in the daytime, when we have the lowest number of firefighters who can respond to a call.”
Creston Fire Rescue Chief Mike Moore says the system is designed to improve response time and quality.
“The goal of an automatic aid program is to provide seamless service to enhance the level of life safety and property protection available to citizens,” he said. “In simplest terms, it is an agreement that ensures that the resources of the fire station nearest to a reported structural fire emergency are dispatched automatically, regardless of local jurisdiction boundaries.”
The automatic aid program (AAP) was created after a Regional District of Central Kootenay director and fire chief refused to embrace a plan by three fire chiefs to unite into a single service.
“After the 2010 regional fire service work done by the area fire chiefs failed due to what I would describe as autonomy and governance concerns at the local government level, the discussion between the local fire chiefs began on how to improve operational responses in the Creston Valley for the citizens,” Moore said. “There are many examples where each fire department individually does not possess the required equipment for many types of responses, so an agreement on the types of resources to be automatically sent to specific types of incidents seemed like a reasonable solution. For example, each fire department each has one water tender for shuttling water to fires where there are no fire hydrants available. It is not possible to shuttle the required amount of water for a typical house fire with one tender, so involving all three departments and utilizing all three available water tenders creates the possibility to shuttle the appropriate amount of water.”
In 2004, B.C.’s Office of the Fire Commissioner (OFC) published a discussion paper on what was referred to as automatic aid programs, defining them as “an emergency fire services program that provides for and shares essential response, rescue, extinguishment and mitigation services amongst neighbouring local jurisdictions.”
The OFC was promoting the concept provincially because in many large city centres, especially in the United States, there were instances where fires took place across the street from a fire station that actually belonged to a different jurisdiction, so there was no response by the closest station because of an imaginary city boundary. The responding fire department was too often a further distance away.
Fire Underwriters Survey (FUS) began recognizing automatic aid agreements and providing credit towards insurance grading systems more 40 years ago. The reason why these agreements are given more credibility over the traditional “mutual aid” agreements is simply on how these two agreements are administered.
By definition, a “mutual aid” agreement is where one jurisdiction assists another jurisdiction during an extraordinary event when their resources are depleted, and only if the requested jurisdiction has available resources to send. By definition, an “automatic aid” agreement is the predetermined automatic response of neighbouring jurisdiction to predetermined emergency incidents. FUS considers that by the simple premise that a resource is being dispatched automatically to an incident, it is a real resource, whereas a mutual aid agreement tend to have a significant delay — it usually requires the responding department to get to the scene, request the additional resource and then wait for it to arrive.
“This is a great thing,” Guthrie said. “It’s funny how long it took to get here when we were so close before. I would say this is the first positive step toward a regional service, which we need so we can use the resources we have in the this valley to their best effect.”
The Canyon-Lister Fire Department is a bit of an anomaly. While many rural departments are struggling to keep their volunteer firefighters up (including Wynndel-Lakeview, which has experienced a large drop recently), it is at a 20-year high in numbers.
“We have added 16 new volunteers in the last 18 months,” Guthrie said. “It’s a good problem to have, but it is a problem. How do you train when you have 21 or 22 volunteers show up for practice?”
For Guthrie and his team, part of the answer has come from its partnership with the Creston Fire Rescue. The fire departments share much of their training program. And the five work experience firefighters now residing beside the Creston fire hall go out to Canyon-Lister on a weekly basis. Their training and experience is a valuable asset, Guthrie said.
“There is no real rhyme nor reason to our increase in volunteers, but my assistant fire chief said that it might be because we have such a good relationship with the other fire departments.”
And the AAR has resulted in more callouts for all firefighters in the Creston Valley.
“Calls are what keeps the interest up (among volunteers),” he said. “If we go for a couple of months without a call you can feel that. But then in the summer, when we might get six calls in a month, it generates interest and enthusiasm.”
“Although the agreement is in place, there are still small issues with fire dispatch that are being worked out to ensure the seamless dispatching of all three departments and directing the appropriate resources to the incident,” Moore said. “As these technical challenges are worked out, each department being paged currently is confirming with the dispatcher that the other departments are being paged for the same incident. Another future step to improve this further is the utilization of a common dispatch channel between all three fire departments to make sure that communications for incidents have limited confusion on which channels are being utilized.”
Guthrie said his crew is well aware of the benefits that the addition of fire protection to Arrow Creek and, soon, to West Creston, offer.
“The difference now is there is a political will to make this happen,” he said. “I can’t say enough good things about the AAP — I truly wish it had happened years ago.”
“At this point, my proudest achievement in my career is being able to work closely with Chief Guthrie and [Wynndel-Lakeview] Chief [Dayle] MacRae, putting aside our autonomy concerns, building a coalition of give-and-take to provide the best service to the residents of the Creston Valley with the limited resources available to us,” Moore said.
“When the regional fire service failed, we continued to work to find the way that our residents received the best we could give. Although I was part of doing this before in my career, this accomplishment here feels far more valuable to the community on the whole with a stronger commitment from the fire departments within the agreement. Even though I feel it is my proudest achievement, it certainly wouldn’t have been possible without the relationship and commitment by Chief Guthrie and Chief MacRae.”
This is the fifth and final story in a series about fire service in Creston. Jan. 15: The amount of local calls and potential financial impact; Jan. 22: the link between fire services and insurance rates; Jan. 29: the fire department’s work experience program; Feb. 5: Town council approves the purchase of a ladder truck.