Proper planning and scheduling is the key to ensuring a volunteer firefighting department has enough personnel on hand to handle any fire or medical emergency during the Christmas holiday season.
Rankin Inlet Fire Chief Mark Wyatt said a shortage of staff members can be a problem with volunteer departments during the holiday season because people come and go all the time and there will be people out during the Christmas holidays.
However, he said, the Rankin Inlet department does have a duty crew that will be on over the Christmas season.
“I, personally, won't be leaving until some time in February,” said Wyatt. “My deputy will be here and a lot of other people in the department are staying for Christmas, as well.
“We monitor that in advance. But, a lot of departments in Nunavut are pretty small to begin with and, if people just all leave for Christmas, you could have a fire and have nobody around.
“You have to, kind of, manage your staff. Even though they're all volunteers you have to make sure you keep people on. Sometimes, if you have to pay them to stay around over Christmas so that you have a skeleton duty crew, well, then, that's what you do.”
Wyatt said the Rankin fire department has a fair number of people on its roster; albeit with a lot of new personnel, and people show up when needed.
He said it's the same every year, in that there are some people away for Christmas, but most of the time he stays in the community.
“I think I've left for Christmas twice during the nine years that I've been here.”
Wyatt said fires can happen anytime.
The Rankin department has had incidents during the Christmas season, including medical calls that happen all the time, he added.
“It's not just fires that we deal with. Most of our calls are medical emergencies, medevacs and that sort of thing. We'll do anywhere between 800 and 1,000 calls a year and 90 per cent of those will be medical calls.
“So we have to make sure that we've got crews standing by for ambulance, as well. We've had calls over Christmas, on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. So, we have to be prepared no matter what.
“Also, on New Year's Eve, we do the fireworks, so we have quite a number of our people involved in that and we do the holiday parades.
“We've had times when we've been running a parade and there will be a medical call. The ambulance is in the parade, so it just diverts and we hope the rest of the town doesn't follow it with lights and sirens flashing towards the call.”
