10-06-2021, 11:57 AM
(10-06-2021, 01:09 AM)nms Wrote: Kitchener Fire Department says it needs more staff and new fire station to deal with growing city (CBC, October 5, 2021)
Quote:"Our last station ... in 2008 it opened, station seven, and we're in 2021, so our biggest challenge is that we can't meet our response times especially in the downtown core," Fire Chief Bob Gilmore told CBC K-W's The Morning Edition on Tuesday.
The report showed response times for medical or fire rescue calls between 2016 and 2019 took longer than the industry standard 43 per cent of the time, and call volume had increased by 14.51 per cent during that same time.
Quote:Gilmore said the FUS states that anything above 2,500 calls a year is considered a high-volume station.
Fire station 2, which primarily responds to emergency calls in the downtown, is the department's busiest station. They were responding to more than 3,100 calls in 2016 and more than in 3,800 in 2019. Station 4, located on Fairway Road, is expected to reach the 2,500 call benchmark within the next year, according to the report.
Is it too late to reactivate the (at least) three fire stations that were closed in the downtown core? I can think of the one on Duke St, the one on Highland, and the one that used to be on Guelph St.
Are there other Canadian examples of fire stations that are incorporated into larger buildings? Perhaps change "ground floor commercial" to "ground floor emergency services"?
Seems like they play musical chairs when it comes to fire stations - some are shut down when others are opened. This will likely happen again.
Where on Duke St did they have a station? And wasn't there one on Ottawa (close to King) at one point, right beside Town Bowl?
I am not sure how many fire departments you need based on population. That said, I do recall as a young kid, when Kitchener had about 132,000 people, we had 5 departments, now we're about double the size, and have 7.