GRAVENHURST, ON-The Gravenhurst Fire Department says it had its lowest number of calls in 10 years during 2019.
During a council meeting in Gravenhurst, Director of Fire Emergency Services Larry Brassard brought the station’s statistics that it had collected since 2016 and showed council the trends it had encountered.
Brassard said in his report there was a decrease in calls from what was initially 252 in 2018 to 230 in 2019. The fire department, however, experienced a higher number of longer incidents than usual including nine house fires, an industrial fire at Dave’s Auto Repair and a grass and brush fire at the Muskoka Airport.
Brassard said in an interview that he thinks the most noteworthy achievement of the past year was the decrease in calls for the fire department. “The numbers have been reduced because of good fire prevention efforts and good communications with the public and it all goes to making these reduced numbers a reality,” said Brassard.
Despite there being a reduction in calls, Brassard said that there was just over $2 million lost due to fires. This is because of the 14 structure fires that cause damage “in people’s lives in a very big way.”
One example he gave referenced the time a firefighter had to pull an unconscious woman from a house fire. “In cases of a house fire, people become displaced for sometimes more than a year.”
He said that one of the biggest problems the fire department has had was faulty alarms going off and that this past year they have had to respond to several of them. “As of January 21st, we are wiping the slate clean for those who may have unintentionally called the fire department but now we are using a strike system.”
Brassard described the strike system as when a fire alarm goes off with no fire present, they tell the homeowner to fix the device as it is ultimately their responsibility. If the owner fails to do so and the department is called back, then they will send an invoice to the owner for how many fire trucks they sent to the scene to deal with the fire. “If we send one truck then we will charge you for one, if we send two we will charge you for two, and this will keep going until the person fixes their system.
Brassard said that he hopes to keep the partnerships and community initiatives going as they continue services in 2020.