The Minto Fire Department has made the tough decision to end its specialty rescue programs.
The fire department had offered water rescue and confined spaces rescue for almost a decade, but at the October 1 council meeting, the decision was made to end the programs, at least for now.
Chris Harrow, fire chief and director of fire services, said the decision comes down to the training involved and the limited certified staff they have.
"Asking our volunteers to give up that many hours to complete the training, that makes it difficult. We've done our risk assessment, and those types of calls make up very, very few of our calls," Harrow explained.
The training would be roughly 160 hours, plus 40 hours to annually re-certify the firefighters. Harrow says they have less than 10 volunteer firefighters certified, and their estimates say they'd need nearly 40 of their roughly 80-90 firefighters certified to keep the specialty rescue programs going.
That doesn't factor in the cost of the equipment and training, with initial estimates for a new water rescue team at roughly $150,000. Harrow points out, though, that cost was never a determining factor here, and council has never balked at the cost of training firefighters of providing needed equipment.
"Our volunteers have a lot of other things they have to train on constantly, so adding this on top is significant to the time commitment they'd have to take on. So we've never got into the cost being an issue with council, it's never been an issue before," Harrow stated.
Again, Harrow reiterates that this comes down to limited members being certified and not being able to guarantee that at any given time for any given call, there would be enough certified members who are able to show up and provide these specialty services.
"Just because of the volunteer nature of things, you don't know how many people you're getting out in a day and who's gonna be able to show up, so you have to have enough people that are trained in the discipline to be able to perform the rescue. So that's why the number is higher because you don't know how many people you're going to get in a daytime, nighttime or really anytime call," added Harrow.
Minto staff have proposed an agreement with Centre Wellington for water rescue and Guelph Fire Department for confined spaces rescue. Harrow says that is becoming common now for smaller fire departments, and response times won't be hugely affected.