Warman Fire Rescue will continue to provide assistance to Martensville, Dalmeny, Langham and Osler fire departments when requested; and will receive assistance from those fire departments when needed.
Warman City Council voted at its meeting Monday, January 9 to approve a new five-year mutual aid agreement for the five partner communities. The last agreement covered the years 2018 to 2022.
The new agreement has already been vetted through the fire chiefs of the five partner municipalities, and will become effective once all five municipal councils pass resolutions endorsing the document.
Fire departments in the five communities have had a mutual aid agreement – renewed every five years – for several decades; allowing firefighters and first responders to call in additional personnel and equipment to bolster their efforts when required. The fire departments also conduct joint training sessions on occasion, ensuring improved coordination between departments during emergencies.
The mutual aid document spells out how each municipality will lend assistance across jurisdictional boundaries, specifies liability insurance coverage by each partner, and sets out other conditions.
The biggest change in the new agreement is a doubling of the hourly fee for service from $250 to $500. This is the first increase in many years and reflects the general increase in cost of operations.
The only other changes from previous agreements include a clarification regarding which fire department retains incident command, and that each department maintains its own dispatching policy. Warman, Martensville, Dalmeny and Osler utilize the dispatch services of the Saskatoon Fire Department, while the Langham Fire Department uses the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency provincial fire dispatch service based out of Prince Albert.