A Firefighter douses what remains of Quickfalls following a major fire last March. (File Photo/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Julia Lovett-Squires

Call Decrease

NBFD sees decrease in calls over 2024

Jan 14, 2025 | 4:16 PM

The North Battleford Fire Department reported a decrease in calls over 2024 at the Monday’s council meeting.

“At the end of the year, our total call volumes were 641,” said Deputy Fire Chief Paul Perry. It marked a 13 per cent decrease from the previous year’s 824 calls.

“We had three major structure fires – commercial structure fires – that you guys are well aware of,” he added of Quickfalls Collision Centre, North Town Auto Body and the Canadian Motel.

According to the 2024 Fire Department Statistics, the department conducted 93 annual inspections, attended to 58 motor vehicle accidents and provided cleaning and traffic control, and 48 calls for fire alarms that were cancelled enroute.

“Our average response time was about eight and a half minutes with one of our calls was a low priority call where we had a higher priority call to respond to,” he said.

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The Community Safety Officers, meanwhile, fielded 18,348 responses over the year, with December being the lowest at 795.

“It was just due to the weather and holidays, there wasn’t as many incidents,” Perry said.

According to the 2024 CSO Department Statistics, the bulk of the responses – 3,029 – were the $40 residential parking tickets, of which, 307 were in December.

Following the report, Greg Lightfoot commented that the statistics from 2023 weren’t included for comparison. Fire Chief Lindsay Holm explained that at this time, those statistics are in a different reporting system.

Mayor Kelli Hawtin also added that having them would be helpful and enquired as to whether the new MRF software for ticket writing currently proposed in budget able produce comparative figures.

“The new software should provide a lot more data for us just because it’s a lot more user friendly,” said Holm.

City Manager Randy Patrick weighed in and said they were committed to doing that.

“I think you need two or three years even of the data so we can see trends,” he said, noting he had looked at the report earlier.

“I think it’s starting to top out. We’ve brought in new people, we’ve had a lot of activity, but there’s only so much that group of people can do,” he said.

“So, it’s not the dramatic gains we saw a few years ago, but I think that if we can get a little bit of a trend going that would be very useful for council.”

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: juleslovett.bsky.social