Idea of CB Centre regional fire department surfaces again

By Craig Westcott/December 21, 2022

Holyrood’s public safety chairman raised a bold notion last week, one that was proposed before but fell to the side because of a lack of interest on the part of neighboring fire departments, according to Mayor Gary Goobie.

Councillor Bruce King’s idea is that Holyrood and its neighbours should look at forming one large regional fire department.

King said regionalization was raised quite a few times at the fall convention of Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador, and also came up at the Holyrood Volunteer Fire Department’s annual ball on December 10.

“I’ve thought about it quite a bit since,” King said. “I just want to throw this out there as a scenario. If you could imagine a central fire station built here – and I don’t mean here in Holyrood, I mean between Colliers and Holyrood – based on all the fire halls between here and Colliers there’s about 15 to 20 pieces of firefighting equipment. Fifteen or 20 fire trucks in fire halls all the way up Conception Bay Centre. Can you imagine if we built a fire hall, took five of the newest vehicles that we have between here and Colliers and we put them in that fire hall and we take the other 15 that are surplus and sold them, can you imagine how much money we would make off surplus fire trucks?”

King said a new fire rescue truck costs about $250,000.

“Can you imagine all the money that we could take and reinvest into a fire hall?” King argued. “We could have enough money for a brand-new fire hall. We probably wouldn’t even have to get (other) money, and that money could also be invested in a 24/7 fire service that protects everybody from Holyrood to Colliers. It’s something that really needs to be thought about. It’s no good to look in the rear-view mirror, because history is not going to change anything. We need to look through the windshield five, maybe 10 years down the road. We all know the cost of everything is going up. The fire service is no different. It’s something that we really need to look into, and we really need to collectively, with all the other communities in Conception Bay Centre, have a look.”

Councillor Curtis Buckle noted a similar idea was floated when he first joined council well over a decade ago.

“I don’t know what year it was,” Buckle said. “We set up a committee with the fire chief and a couple of representatives from each town. We had the provincial government on side that if everyone agreed through a motion of council that they were going to do a study, the Department of Municipal affairs was going to fund the study from Holyrood to Colliers on regionalization. But every town at that time had to do a motion of council that they would support the outcome of the study.”

However, Buckle added, the only town to make such a commitment was Holyrood.

Mayor Goobie said there was another try after that, as recently as three or four years ago.

“The Town of Holyrood has been advocating for a regional fire service for years and years and years,” Goobie said. “Because it would be more cost efficient, more effective, eliminate overlap and duplication with all aspects from the departments from communications to apparatus to fire halls and the list goes on.”

Goobie said Holyrood actually hired a consultant several years ago to conduct a comprehensive study of a regional fire service.

“At the time, all of the councils signed a motion and agreed to it,” Goobie said. “The process was that the mayors were to meet first, which we did, and it was a very positive meeting. I was very optimistic about the outcome. Unfortunately, the next step was with the fire chiefs, but we never had the opportunity because all of a sudden we received a letter one week – and I’m not going to name the department – saying ‘Thanks but we’re no longer interested in a regional service.’ No reasons given. And then I think a week after that we received another letter from another fire department saying, ‘We’re no longer interested.’ The municipalities agreed to conduct this study, but unfortunately, we never got to the end to see what the consultant’s recommendations were because two of the departments opted out before the process concluded and it died on the vine. It was very disappointing, but I don’t want to expound any further on that. All I will say, and I fully agree with councillor King, there is no sense in looking in the rear-view mirror anymore. We need to look ahead. There are changes in the fire departments at different levels, so there may be more interest now than ever of coming together and seeing what we can eventually do to bring the departments together in the form of a regionalized department… But I will remind everyone, it was the Town of Holyrood that was advocating for a regional fire service for many, many, many years. We made two attempts, but that’s where it’s to. So, I will leave it at that. But we will continue to work with the chiefs, because I believe the relationships now are pretty good between the departments. I’m not pointing fingers or blaming anybody, because I’m sure they had their own reasons as to why they made their decisions. I’m not calling that into question. But it was unfortunate that the whole process and the study didn’t unfold… But we will keep trying and see what we can do.”