fire fighters

The Halifax fire union warns they need more staff to operate a vital piece of equipment that was used to fight a slew of blazes in the city over the last couple of weeks.

Aerial trucks have ladders that reach up to 120 feet in length and have a bucket on the end.

According to President of the Halifax Professional Fire Fighters Joe Triff, they are supposed to have four crew members on them – right now they only have two.

Triff says that forces them to take crew members away from other trucks when they arrive to a fire.

“You have more tasks than you have people, and that is a problem because then people try to do more than they’re able to or safely able to,” says Triff.

The union posted on social media on July 28, pointing out that, since July 18, there were four fires that required aerial trucks.

Advocating for years

They have been advocating for years to hire more fire fighters, and in the recent budget from the city, Halifax Fire and Emergency got money to hire 10 more. But Triff says, when they officially start in December, they are going directly to Station 11 in Sackville, where they are most needed.

Right now, the station has one normal fire truck but only two people to regularly staff it. To regularly have the necessary 4-person crew on the truck, they need all those new fire fighters to cover enough hours throughout the week.

Triff says that station is the last in the city that does not have the proper amount for a regular truck.

Aerial trucks need more resources

But the dedicated aerial trucks are another story.

There are three in the city, one in Highfield Park, one at the West Street fire station, and another at the Sackville Metropolitan station.

Triff says that, at his home in Dartmouth, if he had a fire and called 911, three trucks with a total crew of twelve would show up as part of the initial response. But for a high-rise, one of those would be an aerial truck, which means there are two less fire fighters working on the scene from the start.

Triff says we need to get aerial trucks staffed with four crew members, for several reasons.

“The biggest one is that it’s what’s safest for the public and it’s what’s safest for the fire fighters that are operating on those apparatuses,” says Triff.

Council has been supportive, says Triff

Triff says it is probably frustrating for city council to hear the fire service needs more staff, because they have so many competing priorities but also because they do support the fire service.

But when the city amalgamated, he says resources that were once just focused in the core of the city were pulled out to more rural areas, and we have not caught up yet to having enough dedicated trucks for every area.

And it is not an easy fix.

Triff says staff issues will continue until we can have two fire stations in Dartmouth taking care of a fire instead of five different stations.

“It’s hard to build fire stations but it’s easy to add fire fighters to stations that already exist and easy to add fire fighters just to trucks that we already own.”