City adopts provincial guidelines for fire response times

The City of Red Deer has officially adopted new provincial fire response time guidelines.

Red Deer Emergency Services has been following and meeting the High Intensity Residential Fires (HIRF) guidelines since 2014 to comply with the Alberta Building Code.

“Under the previous standard, our total response time was around 11 minutes,” said Fire Chief Brian Makey. “With the introduction of the HIRF standards, which also triggered the relocation of Stations 3 and 4, we are consistently achieving a response time of 10 minutes.”

HIRF guidelines require that crews need to be on scene and have water on a fire within 10 minutes of receiving the initial call. Previous local guidelines only specified travel time.