Above photo: The current fire training centre in the light industrial park is very close to a number of businesses.
While many smaller towns can rely on larger communities nearby for training, Tumbler Ridge is an hour away from the nearest city. This means, according to a report from FireWise, “the District must provide services in the community to maintain basic training levels for fire department personnel.”
In 2022, the Tumbler Ridge Fire Department came up with a new Master Plan, and the new report expands on that, recommending moving the current training facilities from its current location (behind Home Hardware) to a site on the edge of town “that better suits training evolutions.”
The current training grounds, says the report, combines re-purposed buildings, props and a re-purposed semi-trailer. “[The] current facilities were created and built by the fire department and local trades,” says the report. “While not an uncommon approach in the fire service, these facilities now do not comply with applicable WorkSafeBC and BC Building Code requirements. Fire training facilities are subject to the same regulations as other structures built in BC. Steel shipping containers used for purposes other than the movement of goods must comply with the British Columbia Building Code. The facility must also address worker safety requirements found in WorkSafeBC regulations. Compliance with these regulations means that these facilities must be professionally designed and installed under the supervision of an engineer. Industry-accepted standards like NFPA 1402 Standard for Facilities for Fire Training and Associated Props help to inform the design and performance requirements of these unique facilities.”
While the existing training facilities have served their purpose in the past, they are old, cobbled together and have not been professionally designed. They must be “replaced to meet legislated design and certification requirements.”
The report recommends the District develop plans to decommission the existing site and consolidate them at a new site “more suited to housing a fire training centre.”
“Integrating practical facilities with operational equipment and an up-to-date classroom will ensure that the District can meet its responsibilities to ensure that firefighters receive and maintain the skills required to do their job and that fire department operations have the space to meet their requirements.”
If a new space were built, as suggested, the report recommends the new site “should be serviced with a fire hydrant and electricity. Ideally, the site will also have access to sewer, natural gas, or propane for classroom and other prop development.”
Training facilities are an essential and ongoing requirement for fire departments, says the report. “All of the District’s fire facilities must support the ongoing maintenance of critical skills in theory and practical skills programs. Many operational requirements for decontamination, showers and other safety-related service spaces are relevant to the safe delivery of firefighter training programs. The District of Tumbler Ridge is considered a ‘full service’ fire department, requiring training and competency management programs across all aspects of structural firefighting.”
The issue was debated at the January 13 Policy and Priorities meeting, and the first question from Councillor Gulick was: what exactly is a full service fire department?
Fire Chief Curry says a full service fire department is one that conducts all of the things that you would think that your fire department would do: putting out fires, doing public engagement, doing fire prevention activities, doing community risk assessment, doing emergency management. It means we can go into areas where we do not have pre-fire plans. We can go into complex structure and still do our jobs without having real time information on any changes that were done to the property.”
Councillor Gulick says she’s asking so that “anyone watching also understands” why spending around these services is important. “We’re a long ways away from another fire department, so I don’t see the possibility of us going down to another level.”
She also asks about what services the mines have. Mayor Krakowka says the mines do have mine rescue teams. “They do have some of their own apparatus for suppression, extricating individuals out of mine trucks or such,” says Krakowka. “But they do have an agreement with the District of Tumbler Ridge Fire Department, and the fire department definitely goes out to site when they’re needed. They’ve been to the Wolverine site, they’ve were out at Quintette when it was under renovations and the plant started on fire, so yes, our fire department does respond to issues at the mine.”
Curry says that most industries, including the mines and wind projects have emergency response teams. “In the case of coal mining it’s called a mine rescue team, and they are historically only trained to the BC surface mine rescue certification, which is only a very small fraction of what suppression a fire department would be qualified for. In recent months, there has been discussion about them increasing their suppression level to what would be confirmed as an industrial fire brigade, which goes one step further, but in the past they have not had the facilities to do this. While there is some discussion about the mines building an actual training facility on site so they can increase the level of what they are able to provide. Historically, we have put the mine rescue teams through fire and smoke training through our current fire training centre, just on the off chance that we may need additional support. We’re in the final stages of developing a true Mutual Aid agreement with Conuma so that we will have the ability to go out to site, and they would be able to come into town and provide us with a basic amount of fire fighting personnel trained to a standard that we are comfortable with.”
The cost to design an expandable training facility that can be expanded incrementally to address other training requirements of the District of Tumbler Ridge Fire Rescue would set the district back about $50,000 to design and prepare. Add in site preparation, and installing a fire hydrant, it would run up to $445,000 for the first year, and $395,000 the next year.
This, says Curry, is not necessarily an official figure. “I think that we can reduce costs,” he says. For one thing, they’ve already broken the price into three chunks, not two, for 2025, 2026, and 2027. For another, he says, there are things they might be able to salvage from the current training area.
One option would be to share the cost of the facility with industry groups needing access to trailing facilities. “Preliminary discussions have happened,” says Curry. “They were just armchair discussions: ‘what do you think about this kind of thing if we were to do this?’ We have to be very careful about what we do in business and how we work with them. It’s not kosher for us to go to Conuma and say ‘would you pretty please partner with us?’ so we would be looking at other ways of doing this. Perhaps putting it out for an open call to see if there’s anybody that would be interested to partner with us in order to reduce costs. What does that look like operationally, because it would still be our facility, and we would have to provide a technician, we would have to make sure that it’s being done safely, we would have to have some staff time that would be involved in that? It could be built into some type of a fee-for-use model where they have a flat fee and it’s a revenue generating um thing for the district. But all of those things will be explored should we move forward.”
Also up for discussion is where it would be located. Curry says there is no perfect spot. One option would be down by the transfer station, but Curry says the trouble with this is response time. Another possible area are the open lots across from the saddle club. Ultimately, though, says Curry, there are there going to be logistical concerns with any place choses. “Nothing is going to fit all the criteria” he says. “We may not have water supply at one location, or we may not have power at another. There’s going to be sites that are closer to residential subdivisions. We need open space to be able to take a fire engine off of the street, to put it into an area and be able to turn around.”
The mayor says he doesn’t want to see it in a location that will be too near a residential area and have to be moved again in ten years, or even 30. “I don’t want to see us having to move it again because it’s too close to a residential area, and we’re getting complaints and again.”
He says he favours the transfer station area as the response time is not going to be that affected. “You’re not driving from home and down to the fire hall, Your apparatus is usually at the training ground when you’re training. We’re trying to move it out of an area that’s close to businesses. We would not be looking at moving it anywhere near a residential area. We need to make sure as we move forward that it is in the right location, yes for response time as mentioned by staff but also so that we don’t have to look in 30 or 40 years from now and we need to move it again.”
One of the proposed elements of the facility would be a heat training area, where a propane heater would allow the fire fighters to simulate fire without actually having to burn anything. “The fire service as a whole is making great strides when it comes to protecting our individuals,” says Curry. “Making sure that we’re not exposing our firefighters needlessly for the sake of training. What we’re seeing now is a shift away from the Class A burning facility that we currently have—where we burn wood, paper products, hay, straw and other organics—to a propane based training facility. This still gives firefighters exposure to heat in a controlled manner, and we know that there’s no impurities that are going to be in there. It’s undetermined yet if we would make that transition. I think if we were going to be following the industry standards that are coming out. We need to be protecting our people and we would be remiss if we did not look at this as an option. I’m a little bit old school when it comes to this and you don’t get quite the same feeling as an actual fire that’s burning at 900 degrees fahrenheit. Propane just can’t give you that type of an effect.”
This module would allow them to simulate fires inside a building in a relatively safe manner.
The potential upgrade to the fire training facility will be discussed further during budget discussions, which began earlier this week.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
