CBRM councillors call for thorough review of fire departments, equipment and staffing

Councillors in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality have called for a full review of volunteer and career fire services over concerns about the number of departments and the cost of staffing and equipping them.

This week, Coun. Gordon MacDonald called for a thorough review following talks over a lengthy list of issues raised at last week's meeting.

"We know through our discussions at the committee of the whole last week that there are many deficiencies and inefficiencies happening in fire services," he said Tuesday.

"We've really got to start identifying where these issues are, what [are] the issues that they're causing to fire services, where the resources are needed the most [and] how best we are able to get those resources to protect the citizens of the CBRM."

Last week, the Glace Bay volunteer fire department threw up its hands and ceded budgeting of its operations entirely to CBRM's fire service. 

At the same time, the municipality's fire chief and deputy chief warned council that more than 20 fire trucks in various stations across the municipality are nearly 25 years old and are about to reach the end of their useful life and could cost at least $20 million to replace.

Council also heard from the regional fire chiefs association that volunteer ranks are getting desperately slim.

Councillors unanimously agreed to have the chief administrative officer conduct a review, but they did not set a timeline on the review or determine how it should be done.

In 2016, CBRM commissioned a consultant to review the fire service, resulting in what's known as the Manitou report.

It recommended centralizing control and funding of the entire fire service and eliminating some stations, but that has not happened.

Deputy Mayor Eldon MacDonald said that report would be a good starting point.

"We need to provide our services [as] fast and efficient to our residents as possible and currently that's not happening and that review is much needed," he said.

Two stations in Sydney are staffed around the clock by unionized career firefighters.

CBRM also has 32 volunteer departments throughout the county. Three of them — in the former towns of Glace Bay, New Waterford and North Sydney — are considered composite stations that are owned and run by volunteers but also have a full-time career firefighter on hand around the clock.