Cape Breton fire crews feeling the heat of cuts, migration

The director of fire services for the Cape Breton Regional Municipality says an aging population, out migration and funding cuts are turning up the heat on local departments.

Bernie MacKinnon says some departments in the municipality don't have the personnel and the equipment they need to fight fires on their own.

The CBRM has brought in a system of automatic aid, an all-call to departments when there are fires in certain communities.

"Because of our out migration and also with people who are working outside our communities, some communities, and it's growing, don't have enough firefighters in their communities to provide the service," said MacKinnon.

This week council approved the terms of reference for a complete review of fire services.

"I think the report has to be done. There's a number of things that the fire departments need help with, primarily firefighter safety is the big thing. There's money that needs to be identified and put forward for firefighter safety," said MacKinnon.

"We've experienced a number of years of having less to do more and there's been a lot of compression on the fire departments to maintain the levels of service. "

MacKinnon says the fleet of emergency vehicles is also aging and it costs about three per cent more a year to operate them, but the overall funding has not changed since 2001.

MacKinnon also points out there are not enough volunteer firefighters who have the training they need to do "hot zone" work that allows them to go inside buildings to fight a fire.

Normally, it requires 160 hours of training, but they've developed a course with the Nova Scotia Firefighting School to cut that time in half and hope to have 30-40 more firefighters trained in January.

The review will also consider how the CBRM fire service is structured. The CBRM has 34 fire departments, it could move to a one department model, like the HRM.

MacKinnon says no decision has been made and there's pros and cons.

"The one department takes away certainly some of the legal liabilities that are on volunteers and takes them on the region as a whole, and that's a good thing," he said.

"You want to take as much liability away from volunteers as you can and bear that, but there are other issues one has to take a look at, such as the structures within those fire departments and their ability to provide service in their communities."