MAPLETON – Council here has approved a purchase of $491,700 worth of firefighting equipment.
Firefighters’ current self contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) – the air packs, bottles and masks they wear – will expire at the end of this year, Fire Chief Chris Harrow told Mapleton council on Aug. 13.
The SCBA has a 15-year lifespan, Harrow explained, and at the end of the 15 years, “You can’t test them, you can’t do anything; it’s the rule with these carbon wrapped bottles that you have to throw them out after 15 years.”
Mapleton firefighters will be switching to a newer style of air packs with higher-pressure bottles that last 45 minutes, compared to 20 to 30 minutes with the current bottles.
“The departments around us have all switched to the 45-minute bottles … we’re the only ones that are not,” said Harrow.
This means Mapleton firefighters can’t share bottles with other departments at mutual aid calls, he added, “because they’re the higher pressure bottles and ours are a lower pressure.”
Once the bottles are upgraded, Mapleton firefighters will be able to share bottles with other firefighters on scene, including those from Centre Wellington and North Perth, Harrow said.
“A bottle is a bottle – you can use anybody’s bottle on the scene and then we sort them out afterwards. So that will increase efficiency dramatically.”
This ability to share bottles means the Mapleton department can scale back the number of bottles in its inventory, to three bottles for each of the 20 SCBA, deputy chief Marco Guidotti told the Advertiser.
The SCBA packs and bottles will cost just under $375,000, he stated in an email.
The new bottle style necessitates upgrading the existing fill station and compressor at the Moorefield station.
“We looked at whether we need a compressor and fill station in each of the fire departments,” Harrow said, “and we decided that we do.
“There’s currently one in Mount Forest, there’s one in Palmerston, and we would put this one in Moorefield,” where the outdated compressor is.
“Its important to have that because in the middle of the night … we have to get those bottles filled quickly,” Guidotti said.
“And to have to drive a significant distance to get them filled … it probably wouldn’t work that way.”
Harrow said all the local firefighting departments use MSA air packs, and there is only one supplier for MSA air packs in Ontario – AJ Stone.
Guidotti said “we are hoping” to have the SCBA packs and bottles within eight weeks, and the air compressor within 14 weeks.
“We can make do for a little bit without that,” Harrow said.
“We just have to have a pickup truck and we’d be shuttling bottles around until we get the new compressor.”
The township’s existing capital budget includes a provision for $284,130 in 2024 for upgrading the SCBA, more than $200,000 short of the amount needed for the equipment upgrades.
Harrow said he’s not sure where the figure in the capital budget came from.
“Its unfortunate that I have to bring this report,” Harrow said.
“And the goal of the new management team working with the fire department is this won’t happen again – we are going to have everything planned out that we know exactly when we’re going to be purchasing things and it’s more prepared to bring to council.”
The additional funding will come from reserve funds, but be “spread out over the course of five years,” said finance director Patrick Kelly.
“So essentially what we are doing is internally financing it rather than taking on debt or anything like that, so it would go into the capital program in each of the next five years with equivalent allocations,” he said.
“That allocation kind of spreads the cost over five years so that its not a big hit.”
