Chestermere Fire Services (CFS) has seen approximately a 12 per cent decrease in emergency incidents in 2019, as presented in the Fire Services 2019 Year-End Report during the March 3 Regular Meeting of Council.
“We saw a reduction of active fires within Chestermere, we still have trends of porch fires, smoking-related fires, and kitchen fires,” said CFS Fire Chief Brian Pomrenke.
In 2019, CFS responded to 828 emergency incidents and was over the 60 percentile of medical response within Chestermere.
“We are seeing a significant amount of early morning responses because Calgary is a 24-hour city, and we are the recipients of that,” Pomrenke added. “Everybody is still active all hours in the evening.”
On average, CFS shoot time when responding to calls is 109.2 seconds. However, Pomrenke has a target shoot time of 80 seconds, which is the industry standard.
“We average 4.5 minutes to most calls within the City of Chestermere. We do have some of those times get reflected when we have rural county calls,” Pomrenke said.
Given the range of emergency incidents that arise within all communities within the City of Chestermere, CFS are required to train and have the knowledge for various specialties, such as residential and commercial structure fires, medical emergencies, motor vehicle accidents, aquatic emergencies, hazardous material incidents, and technical rescue incidents.
“We’re very diligent with our fire prevention efforts, and we are doing inspections within the neighbourhoods once every 24 months on all commercial occupancies,” Pomrenke said.
He added, “Within our quality management plan, we have a fire prevention program set up, and it’s very active.”
In addition to the CFS fire prevention efforts, members visit schools giving presentations on various safety topics, attend block parties, play hockey games with the Chestermere Lakers Bantam team for team building, and conduct fire hall tours.
Other fire prevention programs include the Home Safety Program, Honorary Jr. Firefighter Program, CFS safety Informational Pamphlet, Home escape Plan Design, Play Safe, Be Safe Program, and the After the Fire Door-To-Door Program in which CFS answers residents’ questions after an incident has occurred.
“After an event, it affects not only the homeowner, but it affects the community. Going door-to-door answering questions, it’s very open-ended, wondering how people are doing,” Pomrenke said.
2019 was an active year for enhancements of services the CFS provides to the community.
“We have an extremely dedicated workforce within the fire services, we’ve taken on a number of initiatives this year to ensure the progress of the department,” Pomrenke said.
The enhancements made in 2019 include the authorship and adoption of the Fire Services Bylaw, Progression in Service Level Review, graduation of two probationary firefighters, Fire Underwriters Audit, completion of professional development courses, Fire Prevention Coalition with surrounding municipalities, Departmental Strategic Planning, redefining goals and expected behaviors, bi-annual wellness checks, and donating $10,830 to the Alberta Children’s Hospital from personal staff funds.
“I am humbled and extremely proud of the work and camaraderie the CFS team brings to the department and am honored to serve alongside such an elite organization,” Pomrenke said.
