SUMA and SGI announced a change to fire rates for departments who respond to motor vehicle collisions (MVC).
A March 1 press release says that fire departments who respond to MVCs will now receive a flat rate of $913/hour.
Previous rates were decided on whether it was a productive or non-productive call with productive calls being any collision that required the departments to use the Jaws of Life, says Humboldt and District Fire Department Chief, Mike Kwasnica. For any other call where firefighters were still on the job, departments were only being compensated a $549/hour non-productive rate.
This is a good first step in properly paying the department for their time, says Kwasnica.
“A lot of what we do is the reduced rate because we get called to many motor vehicle accidents where there still is injury, there’s fluid leaking, there’s traffic control that we have to do for safety. We always felt that when our fire department responded, our fire department was being productive.”
This change to fire department response rates has been in the works for awhile, says Kwasnica.
“We’re happy SGI is working with us and we hope to do some more positive forward steps in the future.”
This will help out in cost recovery for the department, he says, since the non-productive rate not always covered the cost of wages for firefighters to attend to the scene.
This meant some subsidies from the Humboldt and District Fire Protection Association, but even that did not always cover the costs incurred by the department, says Kwasnica.
According to SUMA through the press release, they are still working with SGI to increase the productive call rate to $1,200/hour.
A survey comissioned by SUMA through Dylan Consulting was sent out to departments in the province. What they found is an average cost of $1,200 per hour for fire department in terms of payment to firefighters as well as vehicle and equipment use.
“When we respond, our trucks and wages are worth a certain amount of money. That $1,200 would give us the cost recoveryplus a little bit for the reserves.”
