One of the things we’re seeing more and more with fire departments and volunteer firefighters is that they’re taking on more responsibilities such as highway rescue and search and rescue, with people going through the ice. We’re finding that we’re seeing more of those types of incidents happening where people are having to do search and rescue. Again, it’s usually the volunteer fire department that has to end up doing a lot of these things, because either the resource people aren’t doing it or we have to depend on someone else to do it for us. But what we’re finding is that it’s usually the volunteer firefighters that are having to respond to emergencies on the highway, having to go out there with a fire truck, or in most cases having to deal with these accidents and disasters on our highway systems because they’re the closest community. Yet again they’re doing stuff that they’re really not trained for and don’t have the equipment to deal with highway rescue. Simply because they have a fire truck, they’re responding to it, because they’re the closest community to these accidents.
It’s the same thing when people go through the ice. We’ve had a couple of situations in Fort McPherson where a few people lost their lives just within the municipal boundary, people going through the ice and people are trying to do search and rescue on ice, which again they don’t have the equipment to be doing that type of rescue on thin ice in the fall time when the ice is moving. Again, there are two types of situations where we’re putting community volunteer firefighters who are trying to do stuff
where technically they’re in a situation where they have no choice. They have to respond to these accidents on the highway, these situations where people have lost their lives from going through the ice because of the time of year and whatnot.
Again, that’s the type of stuff from a community perspective we are having to deal with. Is it fair to those people that are putting their lives on the line and not ensuring that we’re not only providing the training in regard to those types of rescues, whether it’s a highway accident rescue or a water rescue? So what do we do in that case and what resources are there for the communities to get the training required to take on those types of responsibilities where other agencies aren’t accessible or close enough to respond?
Right now we have ambulance services. I know we’re coming to that, but the only ambulance service we have in the Inuvik region is funded out of Inuvik. But in the fall time when the ferries are out, it’s the community volunteer firefighters who are stuck in the situation of responding to it. So what do we do in those types of situations in regard to search and rescue such as highway rescue and water searches that have to be conducted when people have either lost their lives or have drowned in the community boundaries?