North Bay Professional Firefighter Chris Cuthbertson was at City Hall on Tuesday evening, inviting councillors and the mayor to shadow fire personnel of Station #1 for an entire shift.
Scheduled for the 23rd of November, the idea is to give councillors a demonstration of the skills and guidelines that the North Bay Professional Firefighter's Association use to protect the city.
The invitation, sanctioned by the Fire Chief Grant Love, is part public relations and physical demonstrations, mixed in with a healthy dose of politics around the limitations in personnel and equipment.
“We want our city councillors and our mayor to be aware of how we work and our tactical maneuverings and our operational guidelines that go on in our day to day fire services,” says Cuthbertson.
“I think that, especially with some decisions that are coming up for City Council, they need to be familiar and aware and educated as much as possible on what our career is and the reasons as to why we do the things that we do and how we keep the public safe,” he says.
The Fire Service, like all departments in the municipality, may see this year's budgetary concerns slow down their uptake of new fire persons, as well as possibly reducing the 16 member 24 hour a day patrol contingent.
The North Bay Fire service has voiced concerns that, without adequate staffing levels, their ability to maintain their high quality of service may diminish and not allow them to enter burning buildings any longer, with the extent of their abilities being only to fight fires from the outside with water hoses.
Firefighting within the modern age are also focusing on a host of speciality skills that require man power and equipment that are costly to the city.
One can imagine a host of scenarios that might challenge the firefighter's from train and plane crashes to chemical spills, even concerns about the inability to disconnect power on buildings running solar panels, making it impossible for the crews to cut holes into buildings with live electrical systems.
Firefighters, of course, also respond to numerous vehicle collisions, with these often requiring numerous staff members for hours, being taken away from the regular contingent of on-guard professionals ready to take on blazes and false alarms that could cause havoc if the events coincide.
Firefighting is an intricate part of the municipalities infrastructure and as the city continues to expand its geographical footprint, the ability of the firefighters to attend calls continues to be stretched as distances between the three firehouses gets larger, especially factoring in events like grass fires in surrounding townships.
With city councillors eyeing the bottom line, budget costs of firefighters have come under scrutiny, with a non-finalized plan to not replace or at least, delay the replacement of positions retiring within the firefighter’s ranks.
Frustrating the negotiations are many factors, including the renegotiated annual budget raises of 5-6% and the mandatory pay levels that are required for the around the clock crews cycling through schedules like a four day on, four day off work period.
Right now, the talk is of not replacing retiree staff, which includes five firefighter spots and two administrative positions in order to reduce costs, but nothing has been written in stone and often the negotiations are kept somewhat secret from the public, whom may find distaste on either side of the negotiation table.
With much of the negotiations going on behind closed doors, it is difficult to report what is going on at which level until an agreement comes forward.
And with the budget not yet settled and passed, firefighting within the city may continue to transform itself into a bigger story.
