“Our schools are safe,” GN says

Nunavut’s director of protection services has been busy dousing flames set by the territory’s fire marshal.
Two weeks ago fire marshal Gerald Pickett made several inflammatory comments at a meeting for hamlet senior administrative offers held in Iqaluit.

One is that many Nunavut schools barely met safety codes. In two cases over the last year and a half, fire safety equipment malfunctioned during school evacuations.

This happened in Qikiqtarjuaq earlier this month, when a stove in the teacher’s staff room caught fire, but a faulty heat detector failed to sound the alarm.

And in Iqaluit’s Nakasuk school last year, emergency lighting failed during an evacuation, forcing students to file out of the building in darkness.

But in a later interview with Nunatsiaq News, Pickett’s boss later said there’s no public safety threat.

“Our schools are safe,” said Alan D. McIntosh, a former artillery officer with the Canadian Armed Forces for 29 years, who was hired in January to unify emergency services, the fire marshal and safety inspectors under one centralized command.

Equipment like alarms and sprinklers are checked by local maintenance staff on a monthly basis, he said. Assistant fire inspectors visit schools and other large public buildings at least twice a year. And an independent contractor is brought in for annual inspections.

When fire alarms and emergency lighting do fail, he said it’s because of problems inherent with electric and mechanical systems. “That’s a very low percentage,” he said of the malfunctions. “I think that’s the issue that needs to come out.”

Another incendiary remark by Pickett was that volunteer firefighters were forgetting the training they’ve learned because they aren’t practicing enough — or in some cases, at all, although Nunavut spends about $750,000 on training firefighters annually.

Nunavut has about 450 trained firefighters. Three hundred of them were trained in the past year and a half. There are no rules in place for how frequently they must practice.

Pickett also remarked on the current state of disrepair of some community fire halls.

McIntosh wasn’t in much of a position to assess the state of each fire department, or the competency of volunteers. He did say he’s in discussions to have fire fighting included in the curriculum of the proposed trade school for Nunavut.

Training is currently handled by Nunavut’s Municipal Training Organization.

“Our fire chiefs don’t really have any training on how to conduct training,” he said.

Instruction in Inuktitut has only been available for the last three years.

As for the state of public buildings across Nunavut, McIntosh says they’re all up to code — from the time when they were first built.

Upgrades are done as needed. McIntosh likens the process to how a faulty part might be later recalled by an automobile manufacturer.

McIntosh is in the midst of writing up a five-year plan. It will include requests for new equipment for communities where breathing equipment, firefighting outfits, hoses and valves are wearing out.

“Everyone would like a new, state-of-the-art building,” he said. “Government knows and sets priorities. But we’re functional.”

Thirteen fire trucks have been bought since 1999, and five more will be purchased in the next four years, at about $300,00 each.

Fire Safety Week materials were mailed out this year to schools on time and in Inuktitut and French, as well as English, McIntosh said. This year’s theme was, “Use candles with care.”

One of the department’s priorities is prevention. Part of that involves curbing the behavior of the territory’s children.

Contrary to the publicity that Nunavut’s fires receive, McIntosh says the territory has some of the lowest fire rates in the country — only three quarters of the national average, per capita — a fact overshadowed by the fact that word of fire travels so fast across the vast territory.

“It’s very visible here, because we’re a small population, and we communicate well.”