Nunavut fire departments substandard, marshal declares

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Firefighters throughout Nunavut lack the leadership, training and equipment to do their job — saving people’s lives and preventing millions of dollars in damages.

Nunavut’s fire marshal dropped the bombshell about the lacklustre state of firefighting and fire prevention in the territory last week, in his long-awaited report on the Joamie School inferno that consumed the $10-million building in Iqaluit last summer.

Gerald Pickett, who’s been working on the 25-page report since the elementary school burned to the ground on July 4 last year, said although many of his recommendations are already underway, every fire department in the territory fails to meet industry standards.

Pickett found three major shortcomings to firefighting in the territory:

* Nunavut’s fire departments, except Iqaluit, are incapable of responding as quickly as prescribed by the National Fire Protection Association.
* Firefighters in the communities lack modern equipment, such as well-maintained oxygen tanks. Several communities also lack an effective way of alerting volunteer firefighters about a fire.
* Every community in Nunavut lacks a dependable water supply for dousing fires.

Pickett said he found fewer of these problems in Iqaluit, which has paid firefighters coupled with volunteers, and more modern equipment. However, he blamed lack of training, leadership, and a reliable water supply as factors contributing to the complete loss of Joamie school.

Although Iqaluit lacked a reliable water supply system, according to Pickett’s report, the city’s engineering department has upgraded its facilities in recent months.

Pickett makes several recommendations in his report for improving Nunavut’s firefighting services, such as enforcing a minimum standard of training on all volunteers and paid members.

But even Pickett admits his goals are far-fetched.

“It’s practically an impossible task,” Pickett said of training all firefighters in the territory. “It’s going to take time. There’s no quick fix on any of these problems.”

Since the Joamie fire, Pickett has developed a made-in-Nunavut firefighting course, which now takes 80 hours to complete, twice as long as previous training courses. The course focuses on practical issues like hooking up fire hydrants, and skips unnecessary national requirements such as how to battle forest fires.

Iqaluit firefighters have completed the new course, but most other communities still lack the training. Pickett also plans to bring instructors from the Manitoba Fire Training College to provide advanced training for fire chiefs on how to manage their teams on-site.

Besides training, Nunavut’s firefighters also need more reliable sources of water. Pickett says “practically all” communities lack the water required to fight fires.

In a fire that was equally as devastating as the one that destroyed Joamie school, Kugluktuk recently lost its Anglican church after firefighters ran out of water while trying to tame an uncontrolled fire.

Communities often lack sufficient water because firefighters are using a self-defeating technique of pumping water from water trucks to fire trucks. Water trucks can only pump 90 gallons of water per minute, while fire trucks pump out around 1,000 gallons of water in the same amount of time.

When the water truck runs dry, firefighters in the communities are left waiting for the next delivery, while the fire continues to burn.

Pickett’s staff are slowly converting communities to a more efficient technique of using portable water containers to supply the fire trucks. In this case, the water trucks fill the container on site and return when it is used up.

Pickett said a lot of work still remains before communities will be up to standard.

“There’s no way up in the North that we can provide ideally what situations require,” he said. “As a matter of fact… I know there are a lot of communities in the South that are in the same boat. Smaller communities just can’t provide that kind of water.”

A handful of communities also lack an effective alarm system to alert firefighters. Before Pickett became fire marshal nearly four year ago, many communities used sirens to warn of a fire in the village. Unfortunately, sometimes the sirens froze up in storms and didn’t work.

Pickett has transferred most communities to a radio-telephone-pager system, which links a building’s fire detectors to a battery-powered monitor device at the fire hall or hamlet office. When there’s a fire, the new system alerts several groups in town, such as the RCMP and fire chief, by automatically phoning or paging them, simultaneously.

Pickett estimates only three communities still need to be transferred to the new system.

However, he said many fire departments suffer other equipment woes, such as a lack of proper oxygen tanks to protect firefighters when they’re on the job.

“The equipment’s in bad shape,” Pickett said. “The… self-contained breathing units aren’t what they should be, most of them. They’re outdated. The air’s not being tested for quality control as required by the code.”

Despite the pan-territorial shortfall in firefighting services, Pickett reassures Nunavummiut that they are safe, considering most buildings are equipped with sprinkler systems, or alarm systems that will protect people from dangerous situations.

The Municipal Training Organization continues training with firefighters in Iqaluit next month.