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By Julia Lovett-Squires

Fire response

Response times where NBFD Chief expects them to be

Dec 11, 2024 | 12:58 PM

So far, this year, there have been 13 structure fires – 10 of which were residential, but response times of the fire department are right where North Battleford Fire Chief Lindsay Holm expects them to be.

“We try and strive for a four-minute response time within the city,” he said.

“Sometimes, it’s obtainable and sometimes it’s not and our response times will vary depending upon the time of day,” added Holm of road conditions, traffic and extreme weather.

Holm explained that regardless of the department, every chief evaluates response times.

“I know in bigger metropolitan cities they’re using about a 10-minute response as a benchmark now,” he said.

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As another year is about to tick over, the department is working on planning for the community’s upcoming needs.

“That is always the struggle that you have because you’re really trying to predict the future when you’re budgeting,” he said.

“Really, that’s a pretty unknown variable for us, but what I can do is I usually use about a five-year average in terms of how many structure fires that we will attend in a year.”

He said that method helps to streamline the budget process, and they have been pretty accurate over the past number of years. However, Holm did acknowledge that 2022 was an outlier year with roughly 31 structure fires.

“For the most part, we’re kind of in that ballpark of 15 fires a year or so,” he said.

“That gives us a little bit of I guess an edge when we’re trying to forecast.”

Part of the reason for the monthly report to council is two-fold: it works to inform the chamber, but it also allows the fire chief and director of protective services to pick out variables.

“Anything that does look on the outside of what I would determine to be acceptable so then I can look at ‘OK, what were the factors that contributed to the longer response time, so that we can get better at what we do,’” he said.

“It does have a lot of help for us in terms of analyzing any organizational change that we may need to facilitate a better response time.”

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: juleslovett.bsky.social