Work is getting underway on a new master fire plan that will guide New Westminster Fire and Rescue services in the years ahead.
Fire Chief Tim Armstrong said the fire department’s management team and Dave Mitchell and Associates consulting firm are getting to work on a new fire plan for the city.
“That will probably go to council in the fall. It is probably about a four to six-month process,” he told the Record. “We haven’t even started it yet. We are kicking it off.”
In 1994, city council approved a fire plan that outlined the need for new fire halls and new apparatus for the fire department. That plan included construction of two new fire halls (Queensborough and Glenbrook) and the purchase of new fire trucks and rescue vehicles.
“I am doing a master fire plan study – what the next five to 10 years looks like? Where our calls are primarily increasing? Are the fire halls located in the best possible place? We know Glenbrook is and we know Queensborough are – it’s the Number 2 hall that is eventually going to have to be replaced. It’s end-of-life,” Armstrong said. “The study will tell us where the best place for a fire hall is.”
An addition was done to the West End (Number 2) fire hall in 2009 and improvements were made to the hall in 2009 and 2011. City officials told the Record in 2009 that the 1947 building had a lifespan of five to 10 year.
Prior to the development of the 1994 plan, the city’s main fire hall was located at the corner of Royal Avenue and Eighth Street. The Gas Works property at 232 12th St. was a site that was once envisioned as a potential home for a future fire hall.
“There was discussion in and around the old GasWorks site. That property is still owned by the province,” Armstrong said of the site that is contaminated from industrial uses. “There are some other options that we have. We are probably going to end up with something closer to the downtown core in the long-term planning.”
While it’s been a long time since New Westminster Fire and Rescue Services has updated its fire plan, Armstrong said it will build on some recent work undertaken by the department.
“It will be looking at hall locations. Everything. Training. Prevention. Response times. Fire hall locations. Core services. Basically it is more-or-less a complete self-audit,” he said. “It will incorporate our Fire Underwriters Survey that we did last year and recommendations that came out of that.”
The Fire Underwriters Survey’s website states that research conducted by the National Board of Fire Underwriters and the Canadian Fire Underwriters Association was used to develop a schedule for grading cities and towns with regards to their fire defenses. In Canada, a classification standard for public fire protection considers the level of fire risk present within the community as compared to the adequacy of water supplies, fire departments, fire service communications, fire safety and prevention codes and other aspects of a community’s fire defenses that have a significant influence on minimizing fire losses.
“We improved our fire insurance rating by almost 50%. We got almost a perfect score,” Armstrong said. “The one area that we need to work on is public education and fire prevention. Those are the two areas we need to shore up, which we have been working on.”
Armstrong said the fire department improved its rating from a four to a two, with 10 being the worst rating and one being the best. He said it’s expected the city’s rating in the Fire Underwriters Survey could improve further within a year or so as it makes improvements in areas like community outreach, public education and fire prevention.
