By Adam Ophus

Master plan

Study makes recommendations for regional fire service improvement

Jan 15, 2021 | 2:49 PM

Rocky Mountain House Town Council recently welcomed a delegation from Behr Integrated Solutions, who presented a Fire Rescue Service Master Plan for Clearwater Regional Fire Rescue Service (CRFRS).

The goal of the study is to identify how CRFRS delivers its fire and rescue services, and to improve on existing services by seeing what’s working and what’s not working.

Clearwater Regional Fire Rescue Service consists of five stations throughout the county and one headquarters consisting of 6 full time staff and 86 paid on call, to provide service for over 18 thousand square kilometres.

Behr Integrated Solutions representative Jeff Carlisle stated that the town of Rocky Mountain House is considered an urban area due to it having greater than 1000 people-per-square-mile. As such, its station would require at minimum 15 staff to respond with a nine-minute response time to meet 90 percent of the time.

Carlisle noted that a really good response time for paid on call fire fighters to reach the station and get going is five to seven minutes, adding, “Part of the discussion we’ll have, is how to reduce those times.”

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Rocky’s current average urban response time is one minute and 26 seconds to dispatch, seven minutes and 37 seconds to mobilize, and one minute and 44 seconds of travel.

The town’s rural response increases significantly, due to the further average travel time of 13-and-a-half minutes.

More remote areas like Nordegg however, have a total average response time of over 41 minutes due significantly further travel.

The study made 21 recommendations for the CRFRS regarding their operations, personnel, planning and reporting to improve the service.