Fire chief defends response time to fatal Nassau Street blaze

Winnipeg’s fire chief is defending the emergency response to a fatal house fire on Nassau Street Monday after a union official predicted more tragedies unless the city increases firefighter numbers.

On Wednesday, Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service Chief Christian Schmidt said while the full complement of vehicles arrived at the scene within 16 minutes, the first crew got to the burning home at 1:10 p.m., just six minutes after receiving the call.

“The National Fire Protection Agency standard recommends 15 firefighters to arrive on a scene within eight minutes, 90 per cent of the time,” Schmidt said a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “In this instance, we had 12 firefighters at the scene within eight minutes, and their work began immediately.”

Local comedian Clayton T. Stewart, 45, was pronounced dead at the scene when firefighters were able to safely enter the home at 792 Nassau St. Three other residents, who were able to escape, were taken to hospital, treated and released.

The union representing city firefighters said Tuesday that 16 minutes for a full complement of fire trucks to arrive is twice the WFPS target response time. The union said staffing shortages necessitated dispatching personnel and equipment from stations located in other parts of the city, which the fire department said was untrue as they were fully staffed at the time.

Two trucks responded from the station on Lilac Street, about a kilometre from the fire; another truck from that location was responding to a high-priority medical call.

Other crews arrived from stations on St. Mary’s Road and Osborne and Ellen streets. A rescue vehicle arrived from the fire-paramedic station on Autumnwood Drive that opened earlier this year.

Schmidt said the time it took for vehicles to arrive didn’t impact rescue efforts, because the fire was so severe that it had to be brought under control before crews were able to get inside.

“The reality is, our vehicles are quite highly utilized, both in paramedic operations and fire operations, so that does mean, on occasion, vehicles are not responding from the nearest primary station,” he said.

“However, the way our stations are laid out, there is overlap within the response profiles for each of those stations, and that allows for us to make up the time and still maintain acceptable response-time standards.”

That explanation rings hollow for United Firefighters of Winnipeg union president Nick Kasper, who said the WFPS consistently shows longer response times and higher rates of loss of life and property to structure fires than many Canadian cities.

“A quarter of an hour, no, it’s not acceptable,” he said. “Unfortunately, I don’t know how we keep defending this.”

City council made a last-minute change to its 2026 budget earlier this month to increase the number of firefighters. Rather than hire 10 additional firefighters annually for four years, it will add 20 in 2026 and a plan to add 20 more in 2027 will be referred to that year’s budget.

Kasper said the increase still doesn’t meet the level of need in the city.

“At some point, I think the city needs to acknowledge that we have fallen behind.”

The WFPS was fully staffed Monday, with 167 firefighters on duty and no vehicles out of service.

Schmidt said preliminary data shows there have been three fire deaths in Winnipeg this year. That number could change after data on hospitalized fire victims is finalized.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca