Joel Plaskett sounds alarm on Dartmouth fire station staffing

Tuesday's Halifax municipal council meeting might get boisterous.

At stake, staffing issues at three fire stations: Station 4 on Lady Hammond Road, Station 11 on Patton Road and Station 13 on King Street in Dartmouth.

• Halifax fire chief says station changes will not hurt service
• Dartmouth fire station staffing topic of fiery public meeting

Fire Chief Doug Trussler wants Stations 4 and 13 to be served by volunteers at night, with paid firefighters to remain on staff during the day. He's recommending Station 11 switch to volunteer only.

In downtown Dartmouth, this has caused a public outcry about safety.

Award-winning musician Joel Plaskett has weighed in about Station 13. After going to the community meeting last week and talking to fire fighters, Plaskett wrote a blog on his website called "In Support of our Fire Service."

He lives in downtown Dartmouth and his business, New Scotland Yard, is on Portland Street.

'Shared walls, wooden structure'

"I think an investment in the fire service is a good investment for the public here," he told CBC outside the Dartmouth ferry terminal. "I'm living in Dartmouth and was hearing from neighbours and businesses on Portland Street, people are talking about the changes to the fire services."

And what he was hearing was people weren't happy.

"Do we want a cost-neutral approach to fire service in a growing city? And downtown Dartmouth is certainly growing with the developments like King's Wharf and The Avery and things like that," he said.

"I look at Portland Street with a lot of old buildings with shared walls, wooden structure. If response time slows down based on volunteer staffing, and volunteer fire fighters are super capable don't get me wrong, but they still have to get four of them to the station before they can leave on the truck," he said.

"If a fire breaks out, to me, it seems we need to think this through a little more carefully."

Response time concerns

Around the corner, at the massive King's Wharf development, developer Francis Fares thinks the plan to shift to volunteer overnight staffing at Station 13 is ludicrous.

"Some of the buildings that council approved are 33 stories high, so I question the validity, the response time."

Fares wrote Mayor Mike Savage and the councillors urging them to reconsider. He said there have been two incidents at King's Wharf recently, both occurring after 5:30 p.m.

When King's Wharf is finished, between 4,000 to 5,000 people will live in the development. Some of the condos, with their million-dollar views, comes with a million-dollar price tag.  

"My beef in all of this, they keep telling people to come to the downtown core, they want more density in the downtown core and they go ahead and cut essential services like reducing the hours on the ferry or putting volunteer firefighters on call," he said. "You cannot suck and blow at the same time. It's contradictory."

Meanwhile, Plaskett hopes common sense will win.  

"I'm trying to do this respectful of city staff and the fire chief and councillors as well, because they all have a hard job to do. It's just a public safety issue."