Firefighters in 100 B.C. communities will soon be co-ordinated by single dispatch centre in Prince George
Dispatchers now responsible for calls over an area spanning a third of B.C.'s land mass
Fire dispatchers in Prince George, B.C., will soon be answering emergency calls from 100 communities across the province, including the Central Kootenay Regional District, almost 900 kilometres away.
It means Prince George dispatchers will provide service to 270,000 people spread across a third of the province's land mass, according to Renee McCloskey, spokesperson for the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George.
The northern dispatchers will also provide back up fire emergency services for northern Vancouver Island.
It's an expansion of Prince George fire dispatch's current coverage of 80 communities, from Kitimat to Creston.
Firefighters from across the region will be dispatched from a new, state of the art Fire Operations Communications Centre on the second floor of Prince George's main fire hall. It has extra work stations for response to situations like wildfires.
"On any given day, we can go from one or two calls to 50 calls all at once and we're equipped to handle that kind of change," said Shannon Krause, who worked as a dispatcher for 11 years and is now assistant chief communications officer for Prince George Fire Rescue.
Marty Dupas, manager of the Fire Operations Communications Centre, acknowledged, "Our biggest challenge is the extra call volume and also the geographic region."
She says the dispatchers are systematically studying the geography of their new coverage areas.
Dispatchers have also been busy responding to fires closer to home.
Prince George Fire Rescue Chief Cliff Warner said his department has seen an increase of more than 1,000 fire calls in the last year, many of them medical calls.