Avondale fire department puts mutual aid to paper

By Olivia Bradbury / Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

October 5th to 11th is Fire Prevention Week. While fire prevention is always an important topic, it has even greater relevance this year as the province was plagued by wildfires over the summer. During those long weeks, many fire departments joined forces to combat the flames and help in whatever way they could. This is not a new phenomenon, as many departments have mutual aid agreements through which they support each other if needed. Tom Gushue, second assistant chief of the Avondale Volunteer Fire Department (AVFD), said such arrangements can be pretty important.

Gushue has been on the AVFD for 13 years and, as far as he knows, there have always been mutual aid agreements in place between Avondale and the surrounding communities from Holyrood to Colliers. These agreements were mainly verbal, with nothing official on paper. 

“But we’ve always been there to have each other’s back,” said Gushue, “no matter what emergency.” 

For example, when the Holyrood Fire Department dealt with wildfires this summer, it called on Avondale to provide its two thousand gallon-tanker to shuttle water. Avondale and Holyrood also assist each other with incidents on the Trans-Canada Highway. Both communities have a portion of the highway they are responsible for covering. If the jurisdiction of the incident is not certain, or if there is more manpower needed, one department can contact the other to join forces.

Gushue said there have been efforts to turn the verbal arrangements of the past into written agreements. Early last year, the AVFD executive drafted a mutual aid agreement, which has since been revisited several times. 

“The new mutual aid agreement listed what resources were available through Avondale fire department, boundary maps that we would respond to for each surrounding community, and what the Avondale boundary map was,” said Gushue. 

The document also proposed a procedure for requesting mutual aid — this includes a firefighter providing his or her name, position, the type of emergency to which they are responding, and the kind of assistance they are requesting from the department they are contacting. 

After putting their mutual aid agreement on paper, the Avondale department sent it to the town council for review, which later sent it out to surrounding communities. 

“I’m not sure if we got all mutual aid agreements back from the other towns, signed off and official, but mutual aid agreements are still standing,” said Gushue. “Whatever was there in the past is still there, but we just tried to take a step forward to bring things up to date, more current, and have it on paper.”

Mutual aid agreements also benefit firefighters psychologically, said Gushue. The AVFD went several years without a pumper truck but was able to rely on the Town of Harbour Main and its pumper truck, which gave peace of mind. Mutual aid agreements also boost camaraderie between fire departments, with many of the departments involved inviting each other to joint training. 

“In my own words, mutual aid is just more or less sharing resources, pooling resources, for the betterment of the region,” said Gushue, adding all regions in the province need mutual aid agreements so that departments can pool resources and come together when needed.