Iggy Five

@hfxfirefighters @IAFFCanada @communitycathy Although saving a building from a fire is undoubtedly positive news, the ongoing expense of maintaining that fire station with paid personnel ranks among the highest in the nation per call.

🚒 Earlier today in Cooks Brook, #hfxfirefighters swiftly brought a fire under control, preventing it from spreading through the entire structure. Lives and property were protected thanks to their quick actions. The first-due truck came from Station 38, now staffed 24/7/365—a critical safety net for the Musquodoboit Valley. This shows why response times matter and why having fire fighters in fire stations, with a crew of 4 ready to respond, saves lives and property. #PublicSafety

@hfxfirefighters @SamAustinD5 @hfxgov @CTVAtlantic @globalhalifax @TonyMancini_NS @beckykentHRM @DartmouthG Our firefighters play a crucial role in ensuring safety and preventing further damage, but in this case, the sprinkler system did most of the heavy lifting. It's a testament to the importance of having fire suppression systems in place.

Tonight, Station 13 was first on scene of a 9th-floor high-rise fire in Dartmouth. Quick response & proper staffing kept the fire to 1 apartment unit. Grateful to the council who kept Station 13 open when closure was proposed. Response times matter. Fire fighters in fire stations on fire trucks matter. #HPFFAlwaysOnDuty

@hfxfire It’s quite the oversight for the fire department to completely miss Halloween safety. It's a basic but crucial responsibility. Let’s hope you return to delivering practical fire safety messages that actually benefit the community. #DoBetter

It’s time to push your buttons! Daylight saving time ends this Sunday, November 3 at 2 a.m. Please change the batteries and test all your smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) alarms. Only working alarms save lives. Learn more at halifax.ca/fireprevention

@hfxfirefighters @haligonia @halifaxnoise @CityNewsHFX Wow, this has been an issue for years, and why is there still no clear plan! If they can’t fix the problem, maybe it’s time to seek external help or for the deputy in charge to focus his energy on this easily solved problem. Thank you to our mechanics for their tireless efforts.

🚨 Our downtown fire station—one of the busiest in Halifax—currently has no engine available, leaving it empty and unprepared for emergencies. Further, our aerials are in a critical state of need. We continue to advocate for urgent improvements to our fire fleet to ensure your safety and ours. This is unacceptable. Thank you to our Local 268 mechanics who work tirelessly to try and keep our fleet operational. #HPFF #hfxfirefighters

@hfxfirefighters The need for more firefighters and improved response times can’t be denied. However, building a new fire station in an existing district, while important, seems to have created significant response voids in other areas.

The National Standard for Firefighter Staffing and Response, NFPA 1710, exists for moments like this. A minimum of 15 #firefighters on scene within 8 minutes for a single-family home is crucial—not just for public safety but for ours, too. Does your community in HRM meet the minimum standard? #NFPA1710 #FirefighterSafety

@HalifaxReTales It's definitely a red flag. Combine that with the city's ongoing issues of runaway budgets and the CAO's lack of control, and it's hard not to be skeptical. Fiscal responsibility should start with the campaign, not after the election.

@hfxfirefighters Congratulations Trevor on your promotion! It's a real shame the HR fire department doesn't announce promotions anymore. Are they avoiding it, or just too busy to keep us in the loop? Thanks L268 for promoting this.

Congratulations to @hfxfirefighters Trevor Marshall on your promotion to Captain! Trevor will be transitioning from the Training Division to E Platoon starting next week. All the best in your new role. 🚒 🎉

@bigskydude777 @Steveninformed @TorontoStar Under Trudeau, ordinary Canadians have seen real benefits: free automatic tax returns, enhanced social safety nets, tax fairness initiatives, and economic support programs. Relax, you would do a lot worse with PP in power.

@iggy_902 @Steveninformed @TorontoStar Benefits of what? We're waiting. You speak as though they are all "free".

More than 9 in 10 professionals in Canada are “concerned about inflation outpacing salary growth,” according to a new report from human resources consulting firm Robert Half. trib.al/rLMCfP8

@Steveninformed @TorontoStar Oh, the irony! Complaining about JT while unknowingly reaping the benefits of his policies is like grumbling about the rain while your crops flourish. Sometimes, you just have to appreciate the bigger picture, even if it’s through gritted teeth. 😉

@TorontoStar Trudeaus 🇨🇦

@HalifaxReTales In a world where politics often feels like a rerun, Mike, like his mom, would no doubt shake things up and put Dartmouth back on the map. Edgy, bold, and unapologetically for the people, he’s a breath of fresh air. Change is in the air, and there’s no better time than now!

@hfxfirefighters Criticizing NSFFS for equipment issues is warranted, but does your fire dept fully and regularly follow inspection and maintenance recommendations set out by NFPA and manufacturers? Otherwise, classic pot calling the kettle black.

📢 For the safety of all #firefighters, it’s time for John Cunningham to resign from the Nova Scotia Firefighters School. We stand with the Blackie family. The tragedy demands accountability. #FirefighterSafety #LeadershipChange Read more: cbc.ca/news/canada/no…

@HRMFireNews Sorry to hear. Your Twitter posts have been very informative, consistently holding management accountable. I'm sure their fire chief is relieved you're taking a break, as your posts have spotlighted his management and challenged his reputation.

Good morning all: Effective immediately, I have decided to take a break from the day to day operations of HRMFireNews. For most of a decade now, the operations of this fire news outlet have been an all-consuming every day commitment. One cannot do such things forever. Despite the occasional rant/troll/dust up, this has been a tremendously positive experience. That said, quite frankly, I am tired out. The time required to do this correctly, in the way I want, is substantial. It is an every day thing, and it times, it completely takes over life. To operate that way has been a choice of mine and a fulfilling one, but I’ve also found myself looking ahead and somewhat dreading continuing to be glued to my keyboard. This is new and has caused me to re-evaluate. Half-assing it isn’t an appealing option. I’ve always felt I would only do this as long as I could give 100% commitment. While many things have changed for the better and I feel this project has accomplished lots, I am fatigued. I can’t tackle advocating on certain issues with the same enthusiasm I used to and while keeping the public informed during emergencies is a privilege, like I said, it’s hard to maintain that pace forever as a hobby. I've basically been giving the fire gods a free claim on all my spare time for most of a decade, which is tough to maintain. I will be honest, I do not know if this is a temporary or permanent break. Since starting the page, I have not spent any serious amount of time away from the page, so this will be new. I’m going to simply put things on hold for now and give thought to next steps. To the members who are pushing for positive change: keep pushing. HRFE has an amazing number of incredibly capable, talented, and knowledgeable people who have made things better and will continue to. Much change is needed but the public is in good hands. I need some time to think about what, if anything, I want to do next, and in order to do that, I need to get away from all of this. To head off any questions that may follow, I should note there is nothing personally wrong. Also, nobody has forced or pushed me into doing this in any way, shape, or form. I simply have decided to think about the future. To be honest, I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while but given the Tantallon Fire and the floods that followed last year I felt a responsibility to try to keep people informed through the full unfolding of those events from end to end, including the PIA. I appreciate everybody’s tremendous support, including the public who follow and the many members who provide information/insight etc. Thank you. There are too many people to thank individually, but seriously, thank you. In other news, I'm really, really, really looking forward to going hours or weeks or days or months without addressing "what's going on near so and so" or the latest problem. After today, I will not be posting, responding to DMs, or writing the Sunday update during this hiatus. I will make a further announcement later on once I’ve finished reflecting on the future of the page. Thank you all and enjoy your long weekends.

@The_Smuffer @HRMFireNews Oh no, the sky is falling! But don’t worry, budget season is just around the corner to keep Tantallon safe. That’s assuming HRM council doesn’t get too tired of the fire chief’s yearly budget increases.

Maitland St: crews have a report of smoke in the building here, they're checking on that. There was a small fire here last night. First alarm assignment is on scene and D2 has requested two additional units. 3E, 3A, 4E, 2E, 12Tac, D2, PCC, 13Q, 5Q assigned.

@5Quint @HRMFireNews It’s concerning to hear that. You should have been trained to know that HRM has hydrants with the same colour but different flows. This lack of understanding of when hydrants don’t perform as expected can delay firefighting efforts and pose safety risks to firefighters.

@iggy_902 @HRMFireNews They are coded. We know what they mean. That's what matters. For example, Grey caps mean they're gravity fed.

I'd like to clear up a couple of things regarding water supply on Pockwock Rd / Upper Hammonds Plains. It is being reported that someone from HRM said these fire hydrants can't be used for firefighting. If this is what was said, that's not really the whole truth. Here's the situation as I understand it. Someone can correct me if they have better information. According to Halifax Water's own mapping, there are approximately 15 fire hydrants along Pockwock Rd, going as far up as Anderson Rd. These hydrants are serviced by a reduced pressure 6 inch water main, which is a small water main. HRFE views this as insufficient to supply water for firefighting operations, so for responses, they treat the area as a non-hydranted response, meaning all responses in this area get an initial assignment of five tanker trucks on the first alarm response to ensure sufficient water supply. However, this does not mean the hydrants are not used. There have been numerous fires along this stretch over the years where the local hydrants are used as a part of the water supply for firefighting. HRFE's procedure for this area is no different than the procedure it uses in a handful of other parts of HRM which have small reduced pressure water mains. As a precautionary measure, they simply treat the area as non-hydranted, but the hydrants will be used if deemed advantageous. They simply don't rely on them the same way they would rely on hydrants in an area where the hydrants can provide sufficient water flow off a larger water main. Lastly, most of rural HRM does not have any hydrants at all. One might reasonably argue that Pockwock Rd should be upgraded to have normal hydrants, sure, I think that's a fair argument. However, the current water supply situation in this area roughly on par with the majority of rural HRM, and is arguably better because even a reduced pressure hydrant is likely better than no hydrant at all, as evidenced by the fact these hydrants are, indeed, used at fires. Hope this clears things up.

@HRMFireNews Should @MikeSavageHFX and the CAO be concerned about the fire department’s priorities? With safety violations at the current training facility, it’s crucial to focus on a new training center over a multi-million dollar admin building.

I personally do not see how there is any defence for ongoing safety violations at the NSFS more than five years post-incident. The NSFS commented on the CBC article earlier. I would like to see some questions asked of the NSFS board of directors, which includes the Provincial Fire Marshall and the Chief of HRFE.

@HRMFireNews Should HR Fire’s past decision to sell their brush truck skid units be under scrutiny as the PIA highlights the need for such equipment? Time for a reevaluation of resources and long-term planning! The PIA clearly shows a lack of awareness of the risks under their responsibility.

Good morning and welcome to the Sunday update. The update has a slightly different format this week, as below you will find some of my observations of HRFE’s PIA of the Tantallon wildfire. These are simply a few high-level observations from my vantage point. They are informed by my own observations as well as many discussions with front line members. These are not all my thoughts on the incident, so I may or may not add to this in the future. Of the 13 themes in the PIA, I am not going to talk very much about the Fire Investigation, Fleet, or Logistics sections. Both the PIA and some first hand accounts I’ve heard suggested that members in these divisions went above and beyond, so kudos to them. I simply haven’t seen anything in those sections that is worth addressing here. Before I go any further: the actions of the members of HRFE, mutual aid departments, and allied agencies throughout the period of this fire were simply outstanding. As residents of HRM we are lucky to have these people and they definitely saved lives and property during this time. Nothing below takes away from these facts in any way, shape, or form. Here are some of my thoughts: Observation #1: For the most part, I found the PIA to be a fairly well-written report, as far as reports go. As you’ll read below, I think that is somewhat beside the point. The PIA appears to have been conducted in line with HRFE’s guidelines for PIAs, and appears to address most of the major themes involved with the incident. There are lots of things is does not say and I will address some of those below. When reading a report like this I do think you have to manage your excitations a bit in terms of what is going to be written down in a PIA from a liability and political perspective. Fortunately, I am under no such political constraints so I will simply tell you the truth as I see it… Observation #2: This report has 56 recommendations. All 56 I would save have some merit for for the most part make sense, to varying degrees. However: My biggest thought in reading though all of this is that the reader needs to consider HRFE and its management team’s demonstrated lack of ability to execute plans. To be blunt: this is a department where none of management’s initiatives ever occur on time, some never occur at all, implementation of any type of change is often bungled, and where they seem to have a massive problem implementing everything from the basics to grand plans to improve the fire service. I have said this numerous times but the current leadership of HRFE is not short on *ideas*, they are short on *execution*. So, when I read 56 recommendations, I view a lot of them as sensible, but what is the point if there is no ability to execute? In this sense, I have a hard time really delving too deep into any aspect of the report because I’m just not sure there’s any reason to believe they can take these 56 items, or any meaningful number of them, and implement them into operations. If I was a councillor or CAO reading this report, I would have a lot of questions about implementation and how they’re actually going to execute on these items, and not as many questions about the items themselves. Observation #3: operations is the fire department. I was asked by a media outlet following the Tantallon fires what my biggest recommendation for HRFE would be, and I said that overall, top management needs to get focused on fire operations. Fire operations are 95% of HRFE’s budget and 100% of what the public cares about. Firefighters, trucks, equipment, the right amount in the right place at the right time. Everything else is window dressing. I think it is important to apply that view to this report and whatever discussions may follow. I thought it was noteworthy that the PIA was written by the Division Chief of Medical, the Division Chief of Safety, and a policy and initiatives staff member. None of these authors are assigned to the operations division. I think this is an oversight and relates to my point that top management is not nearly focused enough on fire operations. Observation #4: given what I do with my hobby here, I would like to say a few things about the communications section of the report. The report does own some of the failures of communication during the incident, including a lack of timely information, confusion around responsibilities, and a lack of on-site support from HRM communications. They are recommending the implementation of a dedicated HRFE Public Information Officer (PIO). This is something I support, however, they are suggesting this should be someone from HRM corporate communications who is assigned to HRFE. No, no no. This shared services model where HRFE is a “client” to some other HRM department does not work. HRFE needs its own dedicated permanent communications capacity. A PIO would be a good move, but it can’t be just someone moonlighting from corporate communications. This has been tried and it doesn’t work. They need someone who understands fire and emergency and can be permanently assigned to HRFE. Secondly, I will repeat what I’ve said many times, which is any communications arrangement that isn’t available 24/7 is useless for an emergency service provider. Overall, I was glad to see communications failures recognized in the report but the recommendations are inadequate in this area. Observation #5: I think the report insufficiently deals with the aspect of career firefighter recall curing this event. It is mentioned, but I think this was a much bigger issue than they seem to think. When the total recall of career personnel was issued later in the week, and other recalls were issued at other times, I had numerous members who relayed they were not getting any notifications from HRFE and were getting their information for me. Obviously, this needs to improve. I understand HRFE is increasingly using a system called Everbridge, which seems to have potential. That said, I think HRFE needs to establish much better standards for when career staff get recalled (such as at a certain alarm level), where they get their apparatus and equipment, where they muster, who gets called first, when it a platoon-wide recall or department-wide recall appropriate, etc. I think this needs a lot more attention. Here are some additional quick thoughts on certain parts of the report: - I’m not sure ICS was followed to the degree they seem to think it was. The report sort of raves about how well ICS was used. Not so sure about that. HRFE more or less has a model where one or two chief officers respond to a call, and incidents requiring sectoring are fairly rare, let alone branched incidents. HRFE’s day to day model doesn’t often need to expand to large-scale incidents and so I think there is some weakness in this regard. There was obviously some use of ICS in Tantallon, obviously, but I think the report overstates the degree to which ICS was adhered to, especially in the early stages of the incident, and understates how much this needs to improve. - There is some discussion of adding to CAD on greater alarm assignments. This is very important. Specifically, they’re calling for a trigger at certain alarm levels for certain levels of logistics assets to be notified. I’ve been saying for a long time that it is a huge problem with HRFE’s multiple alarm assignments that they do not assign the full complement of assets required for those incidents. HRFE’s alarms (2nd through 5th alarms) simply add more engines, aerials, or tankers. Of course these are the key assets, but the system currently does not add additional tactical support units, chiefs, the rehab unit, command post, or other specialized assets. For example I think they should look at making it automatic for the rehab unit to respond on a certain alarm level, (say, a third). It can always be called sooner if needed but this way they can move away from people having to remember to call for things during a complex incident. Enhanced multiple alarm assignments within CAD is a no brainer. - There’s a recommendation to move responsibility for the command post out of logistics and into the communications division. This makes sense to me because, as the report notes, logistics becomes task saturated at large scale incidents. - I don’t believe there is much of anything in the report about HRFE’s coverage procedures, or lack thereof. The incident strained resources citywide, and while coverage decisions were made, HRFE’s lack of a proper system for coverage is, in my view, a clear “opportunity for improvement” (as they would phrase it). This also connects to the issue of career firefighter recall mentioned above. - There is a recommendation for fleet to develop a minimum spare fleet quota of units which would be fully equipped and response capable. This is really important as HRFE’s fleet had very constrained ability to provide trucks for the recalled personnel during the event, and coverage suffered as a result. The problem is that fleet can’t currently even keep the trucks HRFE has now on the road, let alone the addition of a reserve fleet, so while I think this is a good recommendation, I don’t know how they’re going to achieve it. - From what I saw, there is nothing in the report about emergency egress / neighbourhood design, etc. I am guessing their position might be that is for other departments within HRM to analyze. I would have liked to see HRFE address those things as they impact fire and evacuation operations. Here is a link to the PIA as well as a “story map” they’ve created for the incident with some visuals. PIA Link: cdn.halifax.ca/sites/default/… Storymap Link: storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/e93133… --- That’s all for now. If anybody has any questions, comments, etc, I will be around for a bit then I am going to try to stay off Twitter for the most part. Feedback, as usual, is welcome. Stupid or insulting comments may be blocked without warning. Have a great Sunday

@HRMFireNews It’s surprising that this large municipal fire department doesn’t have its own training facility. Consistent, practical training is vital for skill maintenance and safety. Building their own facility is long overdue and crucial for enhancing both efficiency and public perception.

HRFE ceased training at the NSFS for a period of time following the death, however, my understanding is that HRFE has since resumed using NSFS facilities. I would be curious how they would respond to the family's current concerns over safety at the facility.

This morning, I would like to draw attention to a petition seeking accountability and legislative changes regarding firefighter training in Nova Scotia arising from the tragic death of Truro Firefighter Skyler Blackie at the Nova Scotia Fire School (NSFS) in 2019. The Blackie family has initiated a petition, which is currently over 700 signatures, raising their concerns about what they believe to be ongoing safety and accountability problems at the NSFS. Their statement reads, in part, that Skyler was "a kind soul whose life was cruelly taken due to this negligence. Despite the NSFS pleading guilty, it has demonstrated a lack of accountability, with minimal effort in fulfilling the judge’s sentence orders." Additionally, they identify legislative problems in Nova Scotia that "limits the labor department's ability to enforce necessary safety measures" and are seeking legislative change. This is a very important issue that everybody, especially those in government, should read up on. You can find the full statement and the petition here: change.org/p/fight-for-fi…

@HRMFireNews Sadly the mixup goes beyond their CAD. To complicate matters, there has been confusion due to T18 not meeting the NFPA standard for tankers. Ensuring clear terminology and adherence to standards is crucial for effective firefighting operations.

Once again, as I have been saying for two weeks now, T18 and E18 are both showing in service in CAD. This is an error that is worsening responses. Both trucks should not be showing available. There is only one crew at STN18. This is a simple fix. Super elementary yet somehow ignored. It could make a big impact on a call. It is amazing this stuff gets left not dealt with for weeks on end. Or, I should say, it would be amazing if it wasn't so common. Ridiculous and embarrassing.