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MINTO – The Minto Fire Department wants to outsource its specialty rescue services after pausing the township's program due to a lack of certified firefighters.
According to a new report on the Minto Fire specialty rescue program to be discussed in Minto council on Tuesday evening, training a firefighter in either water rescue or confined space has changed "significantly" and would put a "significant strain" on the firefighters as they would have to complete all of their other training on top of the additional hours.
Staff said the training would be approximately 160 hours, not including the approximately 40 hours of additional training required annually to maintain certification.
Initial estimates for a new water rescue team are also estimated to be "well over" $150,000 to get started- a "significant cost" to both the equipment and the training said staff.
"Our firefighters are torn, because they want to offer the best service to the community, but don’t have enough hours to give to be able to certify to either of these disciplines at this time," said staff in the report.
Minto Fire currently has less than 10 firefighters with the original certification in the department. To have enough firefighters certified to adequately offer these services, staff estimate they would need to certify at least half of the staff or 40 firefighters.
To minimize the impact of the team disbanding, staff are proposing the township sign an agreement with Centre Wellington to provide water rescue services to Minto.
Options for confined space services are still being considered. Staff said the closest available option is the Guelph Fire Department.
Isabel Buckmaster is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program
