The Sundre Fire Department responded to 203 calls last year.
Accompanied by Patty LaPointe, assistant to the fire chief, deputy Chief Kevin Gamble recently presented municipal officials with a breakdown of incidents the local department responded to throughout 2016.
From that total of calls, 118 were in Mountain View County, 64 were in the Town of Sundre while the remaining 21 were in other surrounding areas such as Clearwater County, Gamble told council during its Jan. 9 workshop.
He also outlined the department's mission statement, which is to remain "dedicated to enhance and preserve the quality of life, property and the environment through education, leadership, partnerships and effective timely response to all fire emergencies."
Additionally, projects and initiatives the department has been working on include the FireSmart mitigation and preparedness planning, developing as well as launching a FireSmart website tailored specifically to Sundre ó www.sundrefiresmart.com ó and establishing the new training facility. Volunteer firefighters also were deployed to assist in Fort McMurray, he said.
Following Gamble's presentation, Mayor Terry Leslie inquired how far along the FireSmart program had come.
"Is there a follow-through for what's going to take place this particular year?" he asked the deputy chief.
"Well, a lot of people are under the assumption that we're going to go out and start cutting and slashing and doing a bunch of that. Honestly, we're not ready for that," replied Gamble.
"We need some training, we need awareness, we need to get people on board, we need to get a committee of people who are willing to get out and head some of this."
There are some areas in Sundre that have been identified in the wildfire mitigation plan as needing some work done to protect the community from the potential of wildfire as much as possible, but volunteers willing to take charge are needed before those efforts can begin, he said.
"That's kind of where we're at now, is just get it out there and get people involved."
LaPointe added she is also hopeful to obtain funding for public education on the matter.
"It's a big project, so it needs a lot of education, a lot of commitment from the community, and a lot of direction from us. Now that the preparedness guide is done with the recommendations in place, we can start picking away at it," she said.
Taking the conversation in a new direction, Coun. Myron Thompson wondered whether the local department was seeing a trend other departments throughout the province and country are experiencing in terms of increased numbers of drug-related medical responses.
"Has that been happening in this area at all at this point?" he asked.
The department has been known to assist the RCMP by controlling traffic, said Gamble.
"Our medical calls coming in vary ó anything from overdoses to people who have fallen down and can't get up," he said.
"We are first response to some medical calls ó not very many. Most of our medical calls, there's an ambulance on the way or already there. As for drug calls, we go to assist and nothing more."
Thompson said he was asking because the issue is becoming increasingly stressful on departments in areas affected by drug problems.
"There's not enough EMTs to cover all the situations and the fire departments are asked to fill in," the councillor said.
The Sundre Fire Department does have among its ranks some emergency medical technicians and responders (EMTs and EMRs) as well as a paramedic, replied Gamble.
"When we get any kind of medical call, those are the first people we send out," he said.
The mayor expressed appreciation for Gamble's report and asked the deputy chief to extend council's gratitude to the department's other members.
