Homeless encampment fire calls keep WFPS busy in 2025

Winnipeg emergency crews responded to more than 500 encampment fire calls last year and made hundreds of additional safety visits to the same sites.

Between January and Nov. 30, there were 543 encampment fire reports “noted by” Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service crews, a city report notes.

“Any number of fires is concerning and, certainly, we have seen some encampment fires be very dangerous in the city. I know that we had an increase in encampments in the city in the past year (as well),” said Lisa Gilmour, WFPS assistant chief of community risk reduction.

There were 512 such calls during roughly the same period of 2024, so the amount does not mark a sudden significant increase, Gilmour noted.

“I feel the work we’re doing with education (at) encampments and working with the outreach providers around fire safety is helpful,” she said.

WFPS did not provide additional data.

Gilmour noted the number of fire calls includes all service requests linked to encampments and homelessness, not just significant blazes. That means small, contained campfires that fire crews checked out but didn’t extinguish, false reports of fires, dumpster fires and fires at vacant lots were included, she said.

She did not know how many major fires took place at encampments last year.

Meanwhile, WFPS carried out 576 visits to encampments for fire-safety reasons between January and mid-December, down from 791 throughout 2024.

Gilmour said WFPS changed its practices last year to have all fire-prevention officers conduct those visits to encampments instead of a dedicated team, which led to a decline in more routine visits.

“We’re only dispatching when we receive a complaint or we have an ongoing relationship with an encampment we’re visiting quite regularly, whereas (previously) we had a dedicated resource that was out there every day and only in encampments,” she said.

While that amounts to fewer visits overall, WFPS can now generally respond to complaints faster, since all prevention officers are now trained to handle the work, said Gilmour.

A local homeless outreach organization said her team strives to promptly move people into housing and remove encampments as soon as possible, to reduce the fire risk.

“Fires are always going to be a challenge where there’s encampments. Fires are for cooking food, for keeping warm,” said Marion Willis, executive director of St. Boniface Street Links.

Most of the data reflects the time before Nov. 17, when a city ban on encampments in many public spaces took effect. That change prohibits them from transit shelters, playgrounds, near pools, spray pads and other recreation facilities, schools, daycares, adult care facilities, medians, traffic islands, bridges, docks, piers, rail lines and rail crossings, as well as wherever the camps obstruct traffic or pose a “life safety issue.”

The city has since remediated 12 former encampments, including a sprawling site at Mostyn Park.

St. Boniface Street Links also dismantled 18 encampments between April and September, Willis said.

Due to those changes, she expects fewer fires will be recorded at encampments this winter.

“A lot of the larger encampment clusters, where there were more people, more combustibles, a lot of those are gone now… (so) there’s not so many fires. I suspect you (will) see very different stats this time next year,” she said.

She stressed her organization will only support the city’s ban on encampments if all people removed from the sites are relocated to housing, not just temporary shelter beds. Moving people to shelters leaves them at much greater risk of returning to encampments in the future, she said.

“Encampment living isn’t good for anybody and it’s dangerous for the people in the encampments. Fires are only one of the challenges for people trying to survive outside,” said Willis.

Main Street Project, the city’s 24-7 homelessness outreach provider, declined an interview request Wednesday.

Coun. Vivian Santos, chairwoman of community services, also expects the encampment restrictions to help reduce the frequency of fires.

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“I’m really hoping within the next, even half-year, we’ll start seeing more of a downward trend,” said Santos (Point Douglas).

Gilmour said it’s too soon to tell if any change has occurred so far, noting many factors can affect the number of fires, including weather conditions.

The WFPS report notes encampments also triggered 1,670 reports to 311 between January and November of last year. That figure reflects reports about fire safety and many other issues, such as noise and garbage accumulation.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

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Joyanne Pursaga
Reporter

Joyanne is city hall reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. A reporter since 2004, she began covering politics exclusively in 2012, writing on city hall and the Manitoba Legislature for the Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in early 2020. Read more about Joyanne.

Every piece of reporting Joyanne produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.