MINTO – The Minto Fire Department is seeking support from Centre Wellington as it disbands two specialty rescue teams.
The department’s water rescue and confined space team programs will no longer serve Minto residents after approximately eight years.
Council received the team update from staff on Oct. 1.
“The training to certify in either water rescue or confined space has changed significantly,” stated director of emergency services Chris Harrow in the report.
No longer are participants allowed to choose a specific part of the program in which to train.
For example, water rescue has four disciplines: surface water, ice water, swift water and, soon, flood water. Now a firefighter must train in all four disciplines, officials say.
The total training program for all disciplines is approximately 160 hours on top of the initial 40 hours of training a firefighter must annually complete.
“After meeting with the specialty rescue firefighters, it was decided that this was too much for our staff to handle right now and we would pause our specialty rescue programs,” the report states.
It was noted the additional hours would put a “significant strain” on Minto firefighters.
Currently the department has fewer than 10 volunteer firefighters remaining who were originally certified, with 85 firefighters in total.
“To have enough firefighters certified to adequately offer these services … we would need to certify at least half of the staff or 40 firefighters,” noted officials.
“Our firefighters are torn because they want to offer the best service to the community,” added the report, but they “don’t have enough hours to give to be able to certify to either of these disciplines at this time.”
Support from Centre Wellington
As the teams have been disbanded, the department is asking Centre Wellington to sign an agreement to provide water rescue services to the Minto community.
Harrow told the Advertiser the department is still in negotiations with Centre Wellington as of Oct. 11.
“It’s still in the works … they will provide that service, now we’re just working out the official agreement. But we’re working on getting the agreement signed in the next little while,” noted Harrow.
The options for the confined space services are still being “weighed.”
The closest available department to offer confined space services is the Guelph Fire Department.
“If we had a confined space call that’s who we would call,” Harrow stated.
“We’re going to carry on discussions throughout the winter to see if we can come up with a solution for offering programs or partnering with neighbouring services,” he said, referring to the idea of the teams returning.
“We’re going to continue to explore options.”
