Saanich Fire Department is adding 10 firefighters to its Station 3 in Gordon Head to improve response times in one of the district’s largest fire-response areas and address the future needs of a rapidly growing area.
The expansion will mean on-duty staffing at Station 3 will increase to six from four, allowing for a full-time medic unit to operate in the area. Because of the round-the-clock nature of firefighting, five people are needed to fill one firefighter position.
“Adding the medical unit is a step in the right direction,” said Saanich Fire Chief Mike Burgess, adding growth in the area has made it challenging for the station to meet the established National Fire Protection Association response standard, which requires that the first arriving units be at the scene within eight minutes of an alarm.
“We have not been meeting that standard 90 per cent of the time like we’re supposed to be,” he said. “The growth and the density in that particular area has just crept up and it’s a busy haul and there’s more often than not a couple of things going on at once, which slows things down.”
Burgess said there are plans to add more staff two years from now to serve an area that’s seeing increased traffic, larger housing complexes and multiple homes on one lot.
Station 3 covers a large swath of Saanich, from what is known as the panhandle — the two-block strip of Saanich that runs from Lansdowne Road to Royal Jubilee Hospital between Foul Bay Road and Richmond Road — up to Mount Douglas and toward the Victoria border near Maplewood Road.
Burgess said recruitment has not been difficult for his department, pointing to Saanich’s shorter commute times and, so far, lower cost of living. “I would say probably 30 per cent of our applicants are already career firefighters with other departments.”
Burgess said Saanich Fire’s 2019 master plan has a 10-year staffing plan that it intends to continue to execute over the next seven years to keep up.
“I think we’re on track to be able to meet our response requirements and address matters as they’re changing,” he said.
That means planning for continued development, more density and higher residential towers.
Burgess said there are already a number of new projects on the books in the municipality and the fire department has been working with the planning department during the planning and permitting stages.
“We’ve got a very active and progressive fire-prevention division that’s involved with plan reviews and ensuring that these buildings have appropriate access, that the life safety systems that are going in are current and ensuring there are firefighting amenities that are actually built into these facilities themselves,” he said.
As for what the department is doing to prepare, Burgess said it’s about training, keeping abreast of what kinds of projects are coming through the permitting process, and being on top of changes in fire-response capabilities, strategy and tactics that go along with fighting fires in high-rise buildings.
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