Councillor Allison Butcher

After hearing about heavy call volumes during a Tantramar council meeting last week, Councillor Allison Butcher  asked a basic question about the Sackville fire department: “Do we have enough volunteer firefighters?”

She was responding to Sackville Fire Chief Craig Bowser’s report that his department responded to 20 calls for service in a one-month period from mid-October to mid-November.

Those calls included nine motor vehicle collisions, four commercial fire alarms, two requests for assistance from Ambulance New Brunswick, one water rescue, one utility pole fire, one vehicle fire, one rubbish fire and one carbon monoxide alarm.

“With so many calls  for service, is this something that we should be having on our radar moving forward that are we starting to outgrow having a volunteer fire station?” Butcher asked.

“Or do we need to enlarge how many fire members we have, or is it all good?” she continued.

Record call volumes

“Just to give you an idea of where we are this year in call volume compared to last year, we’re up 78 calls for the same reporting period,” Bowser answered, adding that in the years before the COVID pandemic, annual call volumes were about 160 to 170.

Sackville Fire Chief Craig Bowser

“Last year was our biggest call volume on record at 223, I believe it was. We’re at 275 calls for service right now,” he said as he predicted this year’s calls would go well over 300.

“So, to answer your questions, our members are tiring because it’s expected of them to train every Thursday night for two-and-a-half, three hours and then respond to all these fire calls,” Bowser said.

“A lot of the calls are nothing in significance, but still, from the time they leave their employer to the time they go back, it pretty well chews up an hour.”

He added that some employers are now reluctant to let staff go until a second alarm has been called to indicate a fire is serious enough to require more volunteer firefighters.

Later during the public question period, Chief Bowser reported that Sackville Fire & Rescue has 35 or 36 volunteer firefighters on its current roster, seven or eight below the full complement of 43.

Long, troubled tale

The department has been unable to recruit enough volunteers to fill its full roster for more than four years after Warktimes first reported that about 17 had resigned over allegations of bullying, harassment and favouritism.

After Warktimes published a second report in which more former firefighters spoke about the persistently low morale in the department, the former town of Sackville hired Montana Consulting to conduct a workplace assessment, but refused to release its report on the grounds that under the law, personnel investigations must remain private.

The former town reclassified volunteer firefighters as part-time employees subject to the town’s social media use policy which bans any commentary that would reflect badly on how the town is run. It also prohibited firefighters from talking to the media requiring them to refer any request for information or comment to the chief.

Sackville brought in a “whistleblowing” policy requiring firefighters to report any activities they considered illegal or unethical to the fire chief, the CAO or the mayor.

New Brunswick’s Ombud upheld the town’s decision to keep the Montana report secret as did the Court of King’s Bench.

And when Councillor Bruce Phinney tried to persuade his colleagues to order release of the Montana report, all but one of them voted no.