A mental health patient and a labour shortage with BC Ambulance Service caused the Burns Lake Volunteer Fire Department to blow past call volume records out of the water.
Village of Burns Lake fire chief and director of protective services Rob Krause presented the annual report of the BLVFD to mayor, council and the general public, on May 30. The numbers were alarming, and not just looking back at the 2022 numbers.
“It was a record breaking year by a considerable amount. Even if we took out the 40 false alarms that were attributed to a single mental health patient, we still would have had a record year for call volume,” Krause said. “Unfortunately we are on pace to equal that, this year. As of tonight, we are at 22 calls for the month of May and that is the third month out of five (in 2023) where we had 20 or more calls.”
Councillor Kevin White asked “are your medical assists still high?,” to which Krause confirmed “they are.” White was referring to the times BLVFD has to attend to a medical emergency as primary responders because of the province-wide labour shortage affecting the BC Ambulance Service.
Firefighters get called for two kinds of medical situations.
One is assists, which involved ambulance paramedics needing physical help from people also trained in those skills. “Those we have always done and will continue to do,” Krause explained. “They need our brawn to move a heavy patient, for instance, in an awkward basement exit or up and down stairwells. Our record is a 742-pound patient on a third floor apartment. Those will never go away.”
The other is the aforementioned attendance to sudden emergencies requiring medical aid, even if there is no fire involved.
“That has stabilized and I think we are seeing a downward trend as BC Ambulance is able to hire more full-time paramedics,” said Krause. “I think you will see our call-outs decline for medical attention because there is no ambulance available.”
There was a lack of local unit chief at the BC Ambulance Service station in Burns Lake, but that has recently been rectified, so further improvements are expected to follow from that, said Krause. Recruiting is a major part of that position.
Overall, 2022 saw the fire department roll out to 216 calls, which topped the previous record of 165 set in 2020, indicating that high call volumes for this year and last are systemic, not out outliers.
Motor vehicle incidents usually top the charts for BLVFD call-outs, but those were down this past year, and serious MVIs were down even more.
There were 17 fires to which the department attended in 2022, two of them being structure fires.
There are 29 active members of the BLVFD with three new recruits in their initial training stages.
“This is very impressive: the work that you do and the crew that you have,” said mayor Henry Wiebe. “Thank you for your service.”
