West Nipissing’s fire plan recommends closing some fire halls

The master fire plan is one of the most read in West Nipissing, and those 254 pages include recommendations for closing some municipal firehouses. Rest assured that no final decisions have been made, but the council will discuss these recommendations to close at an upcoming meeting.

There is a municipality nine firehouses – or fire stations, as outlined in the master plan – and the report’s authors recommend the permanent closure of Fire Station 3.

Station 3 is a small, garage-sized white building at 1377 Tomiko Road in Crystal Falls. Our recommendation is to close this station and cover the Crystal Falls area with Station 2 at 552 Crystal Fall Road in Crystal Falls.

The report also recommends the city close Station 9 at 13 Waterfront Drive in Cache Bay. If it closes, it would cover the floor of Fire Station 1, Station 9, the main firehouse next to city hall at 225 Holditch Street in Sturgeon Falls.

There may be one more person on the closed list. The report recommends the city reach out to French River to discuss the fire protection agreement between the two counties. If a problem may occur, it is recommended to close Station 8 on Highway 64 in North Monetville.

The report also recommends consolidating Station 6 (on Principe Street in Verner) and Station 7 (Highway 64 in Lavigne) “in a central area between the two communities of Verner and Lavigne.”

The Fire and Emergency Services Master Plan was prepared by Behr Integrated Solutions, which has been examining all aspects of West Nipissing’s emergency services for the past ten months. In March 2023, Fire Chief Frank Loeffen requested nearly $50,000 in funding from the council to hire consultants and fund the plan.

The council agreed and funding for the study came from a provincial grant called the Modernization Fund that the council received a few years ago. The province has required all municipalities to create a Fire and Emergency Services Master Plan.

Tim Beckett and Isaac Comandante of Behr Integrated Solutions presented this report to the council at its last meeting.

Essentially, as Chief Loeffen explained last March, “the idea of ​​the plan is to develop a long-range strategic planning framework that will guide the priorities and goals of the West Nipissing Fire Department.” The recommendations here will guide the city when making fire department decisions over the next several years.

To see: West Nipissing ramps up Fire Master Plan

“Our goal was to examine all aspects of your fire department and develop a seven-year master plan and community risk assessment,” Becket explained. The document covers all aspects of the service, emphasizing “firefighter safety, improved cost control and containment within the service, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the department, and identifying the right size service for the needs of the community,” Becket detailed.

The report states that the above-mentioned recommendations to close or consolidate fire stations could help achieve these goals.

The report had many recommendations and many details for the council to consider. “We will address these (issues) and bring them to council one by one for further consideration,” said West Nipissing CAO Jay Barbeau.

“When that time comes, we will make room for debate and vigorous debate,” Barbeau said.

The entire Fire and Emergency Services Master Plan will be published on the municipality’s website. A copy of Beckett and Comandante’s presentation can be found here.

David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter for BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.