Fire station plan alarms paramedics union head

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This article was published 28/02/2020 (2204 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE head of Winnipeg’s paramedic union says he’s worried about the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service’s 15-year plan to consolidate fire-paramedic stations across the city, which he believes prioritizes fire response concerns over medical responses.

The WFPS plan, unveiled to the public on Tuesday, calls for $154 million to consolidate 30 current fire-paramedic stations into 23 and build one new station in Waverley West.

“And in each one of these stations, I’m told that they’re to put an ambulance as well,” said Ryan Woiden, president of Manitoba Government and General Employees Union Local 911, which represents Winnipeg paramedics.

But the proposed locations for the new and consolidated stations were meant to optimize fire response times, Woiden believes.

“And so to put an ambulance in each one of these stations in their new locations, it really hasn’t evaluated at all the paramedic response to medical calls. And yet 90 per cent of Winnipeg calls that come into the 911 centre are for medical assessments and medical response.”

WFPS Chief John Lane said Tuesday that the consolidation plan is necessary to keep response times low in the face of increasing growth and density. If city council doesn’t fund the plan, he told reporters, businesses and homeowners might find themselves paying higher premiums for fire insurance.

But paramedic union leader Woiden said he’s bothered by the implication that Winnipeg’s firefighting capabilities are stretched to the limit.

“Then why do we continue to send our large fire (trucks) racing all over the city to respond to medical calls?” he asked. “Because once they’re on a medical call, they’re unavailable to respond to fires.”

Before funding the WFPS plan, Woiden said he’d like the city to “send the department back to get another point of view in all of this, which is the medical response and what we can do to improve that.”

Coun. Sherri Rollins, who chairs the city protection committee that will debate the WFPS proposal on March 4, said Woiden is welcome to bring his union’s concerns to that meeting, but she “wouldn’t want to pre-empt the discussion.”

In an emailed statement, a city spokesperson said the WFPS consolidation plan considers “both fire and EMS response standards.”

“The recommendations provided for station locations moves all stations, which house fire and EMS apparatus and personnel, within a four-minute travel time to 99 per cent of Winnipeg locations,” wrote the spokesperson.

Consolidating stations would also improve EMS working conditions by moving paramedics from Winnipeg’s “three stand-alone EMS stations — all of which are in poor condition — into larger, more modern stations,” wrote to the spokesperson, who added that reports commissioned by WFPS also call for new EMS staff.

solomon.israel@freepress.mb.ca

@sol_israel