The Olds Fire Department is really happy with its recruiting in the last few years.
Justin Andrew, Fire Chief and Director of Protective Services for the Town of Olds, says this year seven new members were brought on board after completing the recruit training which typically starts in January and it goes until April or May when they go into the probationary firefighter stage. He adds, they are all local people working various jobs in the community.
According to Andrew, says they also have their fire cadet program which is in partnership with the high school where kids in grade 11 and 12 come and get exposed to the emergency services realm. He adds, when some of those kids graduate high school and turn 18, they then seek application to join OFD as a regular member. They have had four of them do that in this calendar year.
He notes they are sitting at a membership rate of 50 members, which is their maximum capacity. Andrew says “that is something that is remarkable because that’s not being experienced across Canada. There’s a lot of communities that are suffering low numbers of membership retention in firefighting. So, we are going to continue utilize these opportunities and that’s what is keeping our community safe and it’s also doing it at a very cost effective manner when we are not having to employ full-time firefighters to pick up where we can’t attract volunteer or paid on-call members.”
Andrew says having a strong membership base definitely makes the decision easier for the Olds Fire Department to release resources to assist in other communities such as this summer’s wildfires in Jasper. He says “a lot of the communities in Alberta did the same thing, right? We’re no different than anyone else. We have resources and we want to help and so we sent what we could for as long as we could. That’s what makes Alberta great is that it doesn’t matter what year, there’s always people that are willing to share. Hopefully, one day if we ever need that kind of assistance then by being a positive member – by going – that we would rely on that and I have no illusion that wouldn’t happen.”
They sent an engine or a pumper truck with four firefighters up to Jasper on Wednesday, July 23rd when the request was first made for wild fire assistance. They were there until Sunday, July 28th. He says “all of our members enjoy being able to help wherever they can. It provides them great opportunity for experience and training, and making good connections in other departments. So, they bring that back to us and share it amongst the members and it provides a better, effective response here locally as well.”
Andrew also points out that an incident management team member who responded after that and spent a about week in Jasper’s incident command post.
He states that OFD was grateful to have the opportunity to share the resource and then bring it back and utilize it here.