Some disgruntled Beaver Lake residents who say they were rejected as potential volunteer firefighters gave Greater Sudbury Fire Chief Trevor Bain a tongue-lashing at a Sept. 18 public meeting.
The staffing situation is dire at the Beaver Lake fire station, where there's only three volunteer firefighters servicing about 250 far-flung homes in the rural area of Walden, on the outskirts of the City of Greater Sudbury.
The residents at the meeting, which was attended by several city bureaucrats, including CAO Ed Archer, didn't let Bain make it through his entire presentation before letting loose with their concerns.
Renée Desjardins said she would be an ideal volunteer firefighter candidate, as she's a nurse, in good physical shape and lives just one kilometre from Beaver Lake's fire station.
But she said she's failed to meet the city's standards four times now, for reasons including completing the demanding physical test too slowly.
Desjardins seemed unimpressed after Bain suggested a community survey to see how many residents would be interested in becoming volunteer firefighters.
“A survey is no good,” she said. “Next. What else you got?
“It is your duty, in my opinion to keep us safe. So train us, show us, recruit us, Engage us. This is your task.
“It's not to send us baloney and then say, 'Oh maybe if your people will be up to the task, maybe then we'll get some recruits.' Baloney. We are up to the task. We need to be trained. We need to be educated. Come on.”
When Tom Price — an adviser to Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini who commonly attends meetings in the Walden area — tried to intervene, Desjardins told him not to try to shush her, and to back off.
Samuel Jantti, another Beaver Lake resident, said he's been rejected as a volunteer firefighter twice. Once it was because he was 12.6 seconds too slow on the physical test.
He said he has pretty much every other certification you could ask for, including current first aid and WHIMIS training and an AZ driver's licence.
Acknowledging it must be annoying to be rejected over and over as a volunteer firefighter, Bain eventually continued with his presentation of possible solutions for the area.
He said he'd like to hold a “boot camp” orientation session to give people an idea of how they can qualify as a volunteer firefighter and to look at having different classifications of volunteers, based on abilities.
Bain also said he's hoping to hold an additional volunteer firefighter qualification course, but he needs help from council to get the funds, as each course costs $47,000 to run.
There is good news for Beaver Lake residents, though.
One resident said he and a committee of other Beaver Lake residents had met with city officials before the Monday night meeting, and there's a commitment to try to keep the Beaver Lake fire station open.
They were also assured the city's deeply unpopular fire optimization plan is dead. It would have reconstructed the city's fire system, hiring 58 career firefighters, closing some fire halls and reducing reliance on volunteers.
That plan was roundly rejected by Greater Sudbury city council last spring. During Monday night's meeting, Bain told Beaver Lake residents that “we don't use the word optimization in the office anymore."
“It's really null and void, and we're OK with that. Council decided to take a different path.”
Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini, who has been trying to get answers on the state of the Beaver Lake fire station, was the catalyst for the meeting.
A city audit found stations across the city, including Beaver Lake, are in need of significant upgrades for safety and other reasons. Some could be closed or relocated.
Vagnini, whose ward includes Beaver Lake, has been focused on preventing any station from being closed, and has tried to press staff on the urgency of repairs and upgrades at the Beaver Lake station.
Speaking to Sudbury.com as the meeting was wrapping up, Vagnini said he was still “sleeping with one eye open” after hearing what the city bureaucrats had to say.
He said he'd like to see a “one-off” volunteer firefighter training course to fulfill the needs in the Beaver Lake area, adding that he'll find the money the fire department needs to run it.
“One of the things that concerns me because we are underserviced here, is if there is a fatality or if there is a fire and we are not able to respond to it,” Vagnini said.
