It’s been a slow spring for the Telkwa Fire Department.
Fire Chief Laurence Turney told village councillors at their June 9 regular meeting they have been called out only twice in the last 68 days.
There was a minor vehicle accident by the disc golf course in May and crews were called out June 8 for a downed power line.
“It has been an incredibly slow 68 days for our fire department,” said Turney. “We are getting a lot of training done but not a lot of actual stuff which is interesting. I’ve never run into this, in the 15 years I’ve been on a fire department to go that long without calls.”
Turney is also keeping his eye on the river levels and fire danger rating, which are also low key.
“The freshet is pretty much over with and the wildland is low right now in our area with the weather conditions,” he added.
However, Turney is keeping busy with spending recently received grant money.
“We are continuing to work on our wildland grant to obtain boots, gloves and helmets. All of those have been delivered and we are working on a quote for our monitor for our fire truck which is part of the grant as well,” he said.
“We did receive the EOC grant that we applied for it.”
That involves two items, he explained. One was the integration of a generator into the village office, which the Village will have to hire an electrician to put a panel in for it.
The second part of that grant was using some of the information from the new mass communication system to develop some processes and workflows and binders to use within the EOC on how best to use that mass communication system and ensure everyone is trained to use it.
The fire department is also looking within its own budget to revamp and upgrade extraction tools.
“With increase in traffic, with both the construction of the pipeline and other developments in the Northwest, we’ve got some tools that might not help us with larger vehicles,” said Turney.
Depending on what they need, Turney may look into other grants to help pay for those tools.