Fire Chief Lindsay Holm. (File Photo/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Emergency services

North Battleford Fire Department reports better year in 2023, structure fires down

Jan 11, 2024 | 3:11 PM

While 2022 was a very hectic year for the North Battleford Fire Department when it came to structure fires, 2023 saw much better numbers.

Fire Chief Lindsay Holm, who’s also the City’s Director of Protective Services, gave an update on the numbers at this week’s city council meeting.

Total calls were down by over 13 per cent, going from 447 in 2022 to 395 in 2023.

“Overall, for the year-end, we are down 52 calls for service which is kind of exciting for me in terms of it sort of signifies we had a pretty good drop [from 2022],” Holm said.

Residential structure fires saw a big drop, roughly 123 per cent. There were a whopping 29 fires in 2022 compared to just 13 last year.

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Major structure fires were also down.

“That was a really good thing,” Holm said.

False alarms were down too, going from 135 in 2022 to 94 in 2023.

“One of the good things about the drop in calls, 41 of those were for false alarms, which means people with alarm systems are being a little bit more diligent in maintaining them,” Holm added.

Reports of faulty alarms also declined.

Vehicle fires also dropped from 11 in 2022 to eight in 2023.

For prevention activities, fire investigations were down from 31 in 2022 compared to 13 last year.

“It means we had a really good fire safety year for most of the residents in the city,” Holm said.

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @battlefordsnow