Despite a decline in the number of people in the city and some changes in procedures, Estevan Fire and Rescue has remained very busy so far this year.
The department has received 168 calls through Sep. 26, which puts them on pace to have around 225 calls this year. They had approximately 240 calls last year.
Chief Shane Code said the oil downturn has played a role in the lower call volumes.
“We have less population here,” Code said during an interview with the Mercury. “Things are a little bit slower. And the hotels are slower. We’ve done a fair number of commercial and industrial calls from the hotels in the years past, and the hotels haven’t had the same occupancy.”
Code noted one hotel told him their occupancy rate was around 92 per cent at one point last year, but now they’re down to around 28 per cent.
“Everybody in Estevan is acutely aware of the financial downturn that’s associated with the oil prices, and in some way, indirectly, that does affect fire volume,” said Code.
The fire chief has also implemented a duty officer line to try to reduce their call volumes. The line is for their allied partners, such as police agencies and EMS, and is designed for situations that require a fire department response, but not necessarily the full department.
For example, if someone burns their toast and sets off a smoke alarm, the individual can contact the first responder agency about it to prevent a fire call. Code said they can often shut the alarm off or curb them before firefighters respond.
“I’ve given the police department full authority that if there’s a high degree of confidence the alarm is false during daytime hours, and the risk level is relatively low, that they will deal with the duty officer rather than page out the entire fire department,” said Code.
“This reduces cost, reduces demand on the firefighters and reduces demand on the city. And it saves the homeowner or the commercial building a bill.”
About 58 per cent of their calls are alarms, he said, and the majority of their alarm calls are false.
The fire department wants the public to be aware of their home detection systems, and know how to deactivate alarms quickly. And he wants residents with monitoring agencies to know if the monitoring agency will call the homeowner first before calling the fire department, or if the first call will be to the fire department.
“We have lots of people who rent, so if I have a home, and I rent to you, and you move in, but I don’t explain how the alarm system works, or give you the code necessarily, or you don’t remember, and the alarm goes off for really innocuous reasons – shower steam, working on drywall and there’s dust, or burned toast – it can set the alarm off and generate a full response from the police and fire departments,” said Code.
There is also a cost associated with the calls. Code has the discretion to waive the expense, but he said moving forward, the department will charge for unwarranted alarms.
False alarms carry a financial burden for the city, and it creates other challenges. If a call comes in for a false alarm, at least 20 firefighters will be dispatched to the fire hall, and since they’re paid on-call firefighters, they’re coming to the fire hall from their work or home.
Firefighters were also kept busy responding to grass fires this summer. Due to the dry conditions, the rate of fire spread was very rapid at 30 metres per minute, so a burning ban was implemented in mid-August.
Code said the grass fires were often for little things, such as a farmer’s piece of equipment rubbing a blade of grass against a rock, or young people playing with matches. But it didn’t take much for a fire to spread.
