Halifax Professional Firefighters Association welcomes service review

Halifax Regional Council wants a long-term service and resource strategy for Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency. Council has also asked for a staff report on HRFE's medical responses, including recommendations on defining a service level for these calls. Councillor Janet Steele pointed out this week that HRFE responded to just over 5,900 medical calls, which is about 34% of the firefighters' overall calls for last year. Brendan Marr is president of the Halifax Professional Firefighters Association with us now. So, sir, what are you and your members seeing out there when it comes to those medical calls, the number of them in recent years? Yeah, we're seeing that they're not consistent across service that we provide. We know that in some communities there's a perception from the firefighters that we're doing more medical calls than we are in other communities. And, you know, in the severity of the patient experience is not the same across the board either. So I think it's important that we have a look at the calls we're responding to, the amount of our time that it takes, and the value that our service provides. Yeah, you mentioned the severity of the patient cases there. As you point out, there's a variety of calls, right? I mean, I guess, obviously, heart attacks you're being called for. You might be called for a fall or someone with a broken arm as well with a fire truck. That might otherwise be used at a firefighting scene. Is that the problematic nature of this? Well, it has the potential to be problematic in that way. And, you know, we're a fire department, but we're a fire and emergency service department. So there's a lot of diversity in the calls that we do, and we want to help people. So when we have a chance to respond to a medical call and make a meaningful difference in the outcomes and help people, we're happy to do that, and we want to keep doing that. But we also rely on multiple trucks coming from multiple stations. To make a safe and effective fire response. So finding the balance in our service delivery where. We're contributing where it's going to have a positive impact, and still not depleting the resources that we have for fire response is an important thing to study, and I welcome the review that's coming. We don't want to presuppose the review in any way, but in your mind, are there ways to augment the service using either different vehicles or different personnel to respond to some of those medical calls rather than taking a pumper or a ladder truck in a case of an emergency like that? Like you said, I don't want to come to conclusions before we see the data that comes forward. All right. If we have a chance to help someone, we want to help them. And, you know, having a fire truck arrive with four people and start CPR on somebody, you know, there's some essential components of effective CPR that we achieve with having multiple people on scene, and we really complement the service the paramedics provide very well there. In terms of. Looking at different apparatus configurations or having firefighters on vehicles that are fire trucks to provide medical service, that is something that I wouldn't want to see take away from our fire capabilities and the other types of responses we do. Thank But if there's a way that evolves that it looks like we can enhance all of our service delivery, then we should be open to that and let conversations evolve. On how we implement any type of change in the future. Yeah, when people talk about a long-term strategy, what's the value in a strategy in terms of how you revisit you. or how many times you do revisit or how frequently you revisit it to see whether it's meeting the needs? Well, I think when we look at our long-term strategy, we have to factor in the growth of our city, the increasing challenges to our responders, like traffic calming measures. Speed humps, narrowed streets, you know, the increasing risk factors like lithium ion batteries and, you know, challenges around public education on fire safety and how that prevention component is so important. When we look at how this study would impact the future, council needs to chart a path forward and stick to it. We've had so much growth in this city in the last 30 years. And after amalgamation, we spent the first 20 years redistributing the resources of the fire department. And in the last 10 or 11 years, city council has stepped up to the plate earnestly almost every year and given the requested resources more often than not. However, nobody has put a long-term strategy in front of them. And when that strategy is in front of them, they need to chart the course and not waver. We need to hire people. We need to increase apparatus and stations. We need to build a plan for maintaining the stations and the apparatus that we have. And when we fail to keep up with the growth, we fall further behind. And, uh... And then the task looks bigger. The mountain grows if we don't climb it. So it has to be a constant effort to keep up. Well, we will watch for what comes out of council, what review or what shape this review takes. We may talk to you again at that time. Brendan Maher, President of the Halifax Professional Firefighters Association. Thank you very much. Thank you, Tom. Take care.