An action plan for Taber’s fire department has been approved by town council.
Recommendations which flowed from the Emergency Services Master Plan, a study carried out by the consulting firm Morrison Hershfield Ltd., were conditionally passed in an unanimous vote at council’s Aug. 16 meeting.
At issue in the report was the need for a new, more centrally-located fire hall. The other big issue concerned numbers which showed discrepancies in how times were recorded in terms of response times for firefighters. That led to a discussion as to why the fire department was not meeting the 10-minute response time standard more often, and why there was an apparent three-minute delay in responding to calls.
Acting director of emergency services, Mike Bos, who presented the department’s recommendations to council, clarified the three-minute situation for council.
“There was a discrepancy in the numbers,” said Bos. “We went back and found discrepancies in the reporting of the times.”
“The reports from the comm staff, they were using different clocks, and the way they were reporting it to us was different,” said Bos. “We were doing everything right, but there is a discrepancy. We don’t feel there are any safety issues, we just need to get our clocks synched and have everything reported properly.”
That was after 31 months worth of fire calls times being catalogued from times reported to Bos by the Taber Police Service.  
Sometimes, as Mayor Ray Bryant pointed out, times were also rounded up, as two minutes and five seconds would be recorded as three minutes in a report, he gave as an example.
“It’s huge for your department and the comm staff to be working to be precise,” added Bryant.
Even with precise time recording, some on council questioned whether 10-minute response times would ever be reasonable for a volunteer service like Taber’s.
“A 10-minute time is not achievable,” said Coun. Murray Rochelle. “Calgary with their fully-manned stations are at just about seven minutes, and we have to call our volunteers. How is 10 minutes reasonable? It’s a tough thing for us to achieve.”
Bos added he department is close to achieving that, to some degree, and added it could be a case of anywhere from 40-50-per-cent of the calls being responded to by 10 minutes.
The recommendations said in the future, controls may be used to ensure the town is maintaining a 10-minute response time, such as a call-response team, for example.
Like it or not, he added it is a standard the department, and all others across the province, have to try and reach.
“The alternative could have far-reaching consequences, like the building codes.”
According to building code interpretation data from the Alberta Building Code 2006, when a fire department is unable to respond to a fire within 10 minutes, more than 90 per cent of the time, buildings constructed in that town should be provided with greater protection from fire, or should be built at a greater distance from one another. Other requirements, for buildings that fall outside the 10-minute response time, could include a home-sprinkler system, not allowing sideyard windows and applying fire ratings to inside walls at sideyards.
In terms of helping that response time situation with a new fire hall, Bos’s recommendation was instead to build a satellite fire station. The recommendation stated the fire hall does perform adequately, contrary to the Morrison Hershfield report, and stated work is being done on an exhaust ventilation system, at a cost of $40,000, to meet Occupational Health and safety standards.
Work has also been done on the building for use as an emergency operations centre in case of a disaster, and renovations have been done to the training room, upstairs lounge and downstairs offices. It was noted work will be needed to improve the suitability of the facility, such as drainage sumps for the pumps and other units.
Given that, and the above-mentioned issues with the reporting of fire call times, Bos said a strong case could be made for the use of the current fire station indefinitely, along with the creation of a satellite fire station.
Additionally, recommendations were made to revise the emergency services organizational structure, which previously included both a full-time emergency services director and a deputy fire chief. With the departure of former director Brad Mason, and the uncertainty surrounding the Alberta health Services takeover of ambulance services, Bos, the former deputy, has been serving as the department’s acting director. As a result, very limited fire inspections or public education is being done, which were duties that did fall under the deputy fire chief’s responsibilities.
The recommendation now is to revise job descriptions and titles for management positions to include one chief of emergency services and an assistant chief of fire services and an assistant chief of EMS.