BATTLEFORD - The Battleford Fire Department is working to bring in more firefighters as more senior firefighters are getting closer to retirement.
Fire Chief Larry Gabruch gave an update on the fire department's activities at a recent Town of Battleford council meeting.
The fire department provides services to the RM of Battle River as well as the town of Battleford.
Gabruch said the fire department could benefit from having more younger members come on board for the future.
Currently, the fire department has 21 members, which is what it's had for the last two or three years.
"We have never had a greater roster than 24," Gabruch said. "We still have concerns. We're an experienced department, which is great to have. The trouble is that time moves on. A lot of our department is going to be hitting the retirement phase, certainly, within the next five years. We're going to have to re-double our efforts to entice community members to become part-time volunteer firemen, in the right age-category."
He noted that the fire department has learned over the years that it's not best to try to recruit members from families with young children.
"You want to try and get them shortly thereafter, which usually puts them in that mid-30s as an optimum demographic age to target," Gabruch said. "It's as important that these individuals appear to be rooted in our community. There is a large time and money investment in training and bringing new firemen on. We've been very fortunate. The only ones that we have lost recently have moved on to full-time careers in Alberta. We're proud of that, that we've contributed to that.
"But it's a society problem in the sense that it's very difficult to find people to serve," he added. "A lot of community groups are slowly shrinking in size. The social media and other things preoccupy their time. It's a distraction, but at the end of the day it requires people like yourself and people like we have on our fire department that make our communities thrive, and prosper, and be safe."
Gabruch also gave an update on the fire department's annual report at the meeting.
"2024 was a great year," he said. "Our call log, our call load, decreased by approximately 25 per cent over our 10-year average, which is always a good thing in what we do."
"In our own community in 2024, vehicle accidents would be the only one that was marginally above the 10-year running average," Gabruch noted.
Mayor Ames Leslie, who is also a part-time firefighter, said it's difficult to look for trends when assessing statistics on fire department calls for service.
"There are really no trends," he said. "Sometimes it is because you don't have as much inclement weather. Sometimes it's because for the months, the drivers are a little more careful [to prevent vehicle collisions]. We have a little bit more fire prevention in our community resulting in less residential or commercial fires. We very much have grown as a fire department to have more prevention, and more community awareness, [such as] less carbon monoxide calls. That trend is down."
Leslie said those are the good things in the bigger picture.
"I don't necessarily look at a trend year-over-year of less calls, because, as the fire chief already said, in January we're above what our 10-year average would be for January...," Leslie said. "That's how quickly the trend can reverse when it comes to fire protection services.
"But I'm just very grateful that we have 21 paid on-call men and women who are willing to volunteer their time to protect our community and the RM. A considerable thanks goes out to them for making that choice," the mayor added.
