By KEVIN BERGER, Local Journalism Initiative
RM of Corman Park councillors received a presentation at their August 18 meeting on a fire services comprehensive strategy that, among other things, calls for service agreements to be maintained with neighbouring communities, recommends the development of a Wildfire Preparedness Program and lays out the factors in considering the construction of a new fire hall in Division 2, Division 8 or both.
Corman Park councillors passed a motion accepting the report for information and to forward discussion of the expenses involved in creating a Fire Services Master Plan, estimated to cost approximately $200,000, to budget deliberations.
Chief Administrative Officer Kerry Hilts noted to council at the onset of the presentation that he was not expecting much discussion of the report that day; the goal was to get it before council and to satisfy an update to the RM’s strategic plan on service delivery and fire protection.
Hilts noted that under provincial legislation, the RM is not required to operate its own fire department or fire hall, but if it chooses not to do so, it must make other reasonable arrangements to provide that service through agreements with neighbouring municipalities or privately contracted services.
It must also appoint a fire chief and local assistant, administer and enforce fire safety standards, review and communicate information about locally available fire services annually, establish an emergency management organization and emergency plan and arrange for the control and suppression of wildfires within its boundaries.
Hilts said the RM presents a “unique challenge” given that its size, which encompasses over 800 square miles of land, encompasses approximately 1,800 kilometres of roadways, six urban municipalities and eight divisions of varying populations, road densities, water access and fire risks.
“A single operating model will not serve every part of the RM effectively,” he said.
As noted in the report itself, the RM has a “major asset” in the form of its contracted-service network. Saskatoon provides high-capability urban resources to the south and southeast, while Martensville, Warman, Osler, Dalmeny and Langham provide strategically located coverage in the north and west.
Regardless of anything else, the report suggests the RM should avoid duplicating nearby urban stations where a dependable agreement can provide equal or better response at a lower whole-life cost.
“Existing agreements with Saskatoon, Warman, Martensville, Osler, Dalmeny and Langham remain a major useful asset and should continue to be the backbone of our system,” Hilts said, noting that mutual assistance agreements with Aberdeen, Blucher and Dundurn should also be updated.
That said, there may be a business case for an RM-owned fire station in Division 2, 8 or both. That case must be evidence-based, and the report lays out weighted criteria to form the basis of that business case – a reduction in travel time to existing risks, incident demand, volunteer availability, water supply, site readiness and so on.
For instance, the report notes that the limiting factor to fire services in most of the RM is not the pump on the fire truck, but the sustained delivery of water to the incident, as a pumper can empty a small tanker in minutes. Thus, water supply is alloted 15% of the weighting in any consideration of a new station.
The report also describes the costs involved in establishing an RM-owned fire station: approximately $9.65 million in initial capital costs and $1.49 million per year in ongoing costs. Over 20 years, that comes out to about $39 million, minus “residual value and any agreement savings.”
Hilts stressed that building a fire hall alone does not create a fire service, adding “The station will only improve services for trained personnel to respond promptly.”
The report also goes into detail on the necessity of a Wildfire Preparedness Program aligned with the RM’s emergency management plan and delivered jointly with contracted departments, neighbouring municipalities, the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA), agriculture producers, developers and rural communities.
It makes a number of recommendations as part of this program, such as maintaining an annual wildfire and grassland risk map for the entire municipality; preparing community wildfire plans for higher-risk residential developments; adopting a risk-based vegetation and fuel management program for RM property; working with hamlets to identify fire breaks and safe refuge areas; developing pre-scripted messages about fire bans and evacuation alerts; completing an after-action review following major wildfires and reporting to council annually about wildfire risks, bans, incidents and response performance.
Finally, the report lays out a timeline for implementing the various components of this strategy, with the most immediate step (zero to 12 months) being renewing service agreements, appointing a co-ordination lead, mapping water sources and so on.
For council, however, the initial steps would be to approve this strategy and funding for a Fire Services Master Plan, which the report notes could take into consideration additional factors like the possibility of the RM becoming a municipal district or developing a regional fire service.
At the end of the presentation, Division 1 Councillor John Germs said it was a “great report,” but he needed more time to digest it, noting that he was turned off a bit by some of the dollar figures and he believed more stringent rules were needed for controlled burns.
Division 6 Councillor Steven Balzer also commented that it was a good report, and this type of proactive focus on managing concerns made him more comfortable with his role on council.