Response times, recruitment and the future all effected by CFD Budget cuts

The Calgary Flames are getting a new home but recent budget cuts have some sounding the alarm about what it means for your home, as the fire department prepares to slash $9 million from its budget.

CALGARY (660 NEWS) – The Calgary Fire Department is seeing a $9-million budget cut after Calgary City Council approved cutting $60-million from essential services earlier this week.

Calgary Fire Chief Steve Dongworth said that council approved cutting $7.6-million earlier in the week along with $1.6-million that the department was asked to find earlier in the year.

Dongworth explained that the cuts will ultimately lead to an increase in response time to both fire and medical-related calls.

“We have response times targets of seven minutes to get to the fire and emergency calls without first units, and eleven minutes to assemble an effective response force,” Dongworth said. “For our effective response force we are already around 13-minute mark and this will mean that will go further in the wrong direction, without question.”

Dongworth said that these delays in response times could mean putting firefighters and the public safety at risk.

Another area where delays will be seen is when it comes to medical response times because four medical units have been taken offline due to the budget cuts.

This will mean is instead of an SUV equipped with a crew of two people and medical equipment being dispatched to a call, a fire engine with a team of four people will be sent instead, which Dongworth said: “isn’t a particularly efficient model.”

The four medical units that have been parked will end up being sold as used vehicles after the equipment is taken out of them.

“With less units in the fleet, at times when things get busier then people will have to wait longer for us to arrive.”

For critical incidents where CPR or a defibrillator is needed and there is no access to either of these then “their lots of evidence that suggests for every minute a person is in cardiac arrest their chance of survival decreases by 10 percent.”

Dongworth explained that there were tough decisions made in the CFD to make sure that the department stayed on budget and would not have to lay off any of their employees. One of those decisions was canceling the July 15th recruitment class.

Dongworth said that the class consisted of 40 people, some of which had been given job offers and moved to Calgary specifically for the opportunity.

However he said that financially if they hired the 40 recruits this would have meant layoffs, this also means that there will not be another class till 2021 at the earliest.

“There is still further conversation of cuts for 2021 and 2022, so realistically it could be five years before we are hiring again.”

Overtime is another area that has been cut, which means that trucks are ultimately being taken offline every shift.

“What we have traditionally done is have a minimum level of staffing to staff the vehicles we have to serve the public,” Dongworth said. “And when we have fallen below that level we have paid overtime to bring people in – what we have done now is we have eliminated overtime and put trucks out of service.”

An example he gave was earlier this week when the CFD took one of the rescue boats offline, but he said that when those calls are being made they look at what will be the cause the least harm to Calgarians.

“We adjust everything we do on what kind of calls we anticipate that day, and what will impact emergency crews.”

Looking forward to November Dongworth said that if there are deeper cuts to the CFD’s budget then they will have to look at all options.

 

–With files from CityNews. 

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