ATHABASCA – Last year was another record-breaking year for the Athabasca Fire Department, at least as far as call volumes go.
Fire chief Travis Shalapay presented his annual report to town council during the Feb. 1 regular meeting showing the department responded to 166 calls in the 2021 calendar year, up from 116 in 2020, which broke the previous record of 115, set in 2015. Over the last five years, the department has seen a 56 per cent increase in call volumes.
Call volumes don’t necessarily tell the full story though.
“Fortunately, 30 per cent of those were alarm calls or stand-downs,” Shalapay said, noting a stand-down is classified as a call where members respond to a residence, but nothing is found, or when they are put on stand-by to assist another department.
“Like us, all volunteer departments do struggle from time to time with staffing, so last year we certainly relied heavily on each other for that standby response,” he said. “You'll see with the county, six of the eight county alarm calls are stand-bys, where we were put proactively on standby for a structure fire and once they get on scene, they've determined that it’s not requiring additional resources.”
Those 51 stand-down calls added to the 18 structure fires; 11 wildland fires; four vehicle fires; 29 motor vehicle accidents, including three ATV incidents; 25 medical calls; eight smoke investigations; six service calls, or bylaw complaints; six technical rescues; and five hazmat calls make up the busiest year in department history.
“Most notably the increases were to fires of all types — that's motor vehicle, structure and wildland —we've seen kind of an across-the-board increase. In medical responses as well, we did see about a 30 per cent bump-up in calls over the five-year average, but notably it was less than the 2020 number,” said Shalapay.
Coun. Dave Pacholok wondered if the increase in medical calls was due to recent issues with ambulance services across the province.
Shalapay responded that it really depends on the type of call they receive, but the majority of medical calls are for lift assists, which require more responders to make sure heavier patients, and EMS staff, are safe throughout the transportation from home to ambulance to hospital.
As a member of Alberta Health Services’ Medical Response Program, he also noted the department receives funding for equipment and training in exchange for material support when required but gets to decide which calls it responds to.
“Right now, our level of service is very refined,” said Shalapay. “We're responding to motor vehicle-type calls; water rescues; things that are fire department-related; CO calls. Anything with a fire or explosion, the fire department gets automatically dispatched to.”
Shalapay reflected on one response to a carbon monoxide alarm just after Christmas that saw levels of the deadly gas reach 150 parts per million “which is actually immediately dangerous for life and health.”
While most of the CO calls the department responds to are often false alarms, Shalapay said firefighters will use those instances as educational opportunities, because as demonstrated, sometimes the alarm is legitimate.
As far as staffing goes, Shalapay noted there had been some changeover in the previous year that saw senior members move on, but more less experienced members stepped in to fill the ranks, which bodes well for the future, but the experience and training of those who left will surely be missed in the near-term, he said.
“Our membership numbers are up. We've seen some turnover and we've got some really eager young members on now, so we're sitting at 26 members,” he said. “At 166 calls, I’ve personally talked to membership and there’s no one that feels burned out or overworked yet, so it was well-paced. We didn’t have a rush. We did have a couple structure fires in a row that taxed us a little bit, but once we got past that little bit of an issue, things seemed to level out.”
Mayor Rob Balay thanked Shalapay for his presentation and the entire department for their service to the community.
“We are so fortunate to have such an active fire department and such a strong leader and someone who has the experience that you have. We’re very lucky to have you.”
