I just wanted to thank you for publishing “Niagara doesn’t need all these fire chiefs” in a recent “Hot Take” column.
I think the problems go beyond what James Culic outlined, but fire departments have become a major cost centre for most municipalities everywhere, and I don’t think the general public recognizes this because of the lack of information and transparency coming from the fire departments or the municipalities themselves, so this was refreshing and informative to read.
Very seldom do fire departments or the Ontario Fire Marshal inform the public of the statistics. Most of their published media is about fire prevention, internal promotions or when a new piece of equipment arrives, but very seldom do you hear about the actual fire calls, or the cause, damages and repercussions of the incident. A few departments do highlight calls, and some break down the occurrences and publish their call volume on a monthly basis, but these departments are a rarity. [Editor’s note: The Pelham Fire Department provides PelhamToday with a weekly summary of its callouts, which runs each Saturday.]
The public mostly reads about or views the sensational or tragic events through news agencies, and that is usually when you see the fire chief out in public. From what I have heard, many fire chief positions have become administrative and the deputies and district chiefs take care of overseeing the 24-hour day-to-day events.
The cost of the service is primarily only visible as published in the projected budgets, and unless you are an actuary or a master of the old shell game, they are not really transparent and can be very hard to understand for the public and probably even councils. Everything I have seen indicates fire calls are way down, and through the tiered response system most fire departments are attending more vehicle collisions and wellness or health calls, in support of a somewhat overwhelmed paramedic service, in today’s rather stressed healthcare system. I believe this primarily comes about because fire stations are usually located fairly close together and can get to a call well before the paramedics.
Looking from the outside in, this is a valued service to the public, but it is also duplicated costs to taxpayers which they may not see. Fire trucks are very specialised vehicles, but they do not transport people, as do ambulances. There are at least two buildings housing these separate vehicles so staff can respond to the medical or accident call. There is also duplicated supervisory staff to oversee the operation which normally sees two paramedics and four firefighters attending.
Moving away from the street level, we get to the executive level where there is a director who usually has multiple staff to help with the paperwork. This is the fire chief level of which so many are members of the Sunshine List.
I hope this offers a partial insight of why I was intrigued by this column and some of the factors I feel contribute to emergency services becoming so costly. There is bloat that should be addressed and the sharing of fire chiefs across different fire departments does not seem to be an unreasonable approach as a start to streamlining this process and reducing the costs.
Bob Simpson
Brampton
