STAFFING

As our community has grown, our fire department has not kept pace, and our staffing levels have fallen critically behind. Across Alberta, and Canada, municipalities have a firefighter-to-population ratio that meets or exceeds the benchmark of 1:1000 in most cases. This standard is a key indicator of a department's capacity to protect its community.

The 1:1000 firefighter-to-population benchmark is not a gold standard, but a compromise position. It serves as a good-faith target that many municipalities in Alberta are meeting or exceeding. However, it is important to understand that the benchmark standard for firefighter staffing and deployment, NFPA 1710, is much higher. This is because the NFPA standard is based on a scientific, task-oriented analysis of what it takes to perform life-saving fireground operations, not on a simple population ratio. While meeting the 1:1000 ratio is a positive step to aim for, it is truly the minimum required to provide a basic level of service and is not the standard for effective and safe firefighting. Maximum staffing in Cochrane falls 30% short of this 1:1000 target and 50% short of the NFPA response standard.

Cochrane runs down to a minimum of 4 firefighters on shift. This has not changed since 2010. Since that time, the population has more than doubled, with no increase to baseline firefighter staffing levels. The Fire Services Master Plan presented in 2023, developed in 2022, called for increased staffing as the #1 priority of 73 recommendations. The plan also called for increasing the minimum on-duty staffing level.

The Complexities of Modern Housing

As our community grows and more multi-story apartments, condominiums, and other high-density buildings are constructed, the job of a firefighter becomes significantly more complex. Fighting a fire in a multi-story building requires a much larger team than a single-family home. This is because firefighters must perform multiple, coordinated tasks simultaneously, such as:

Searching multiple floors for trapped residents
Advancing hoselines up and through multiple levels of large buildings
Ventilating the structure to clear smoke for tenability and rescue
Setting up ladder trucks to reach upper floors
Establishing a dedicated Rapid Intervention Team (RIT) ready to rescue any trapped firefighters

The number of firefighters required for these tasks is not a guess; it's a documented safety standard. According to NFPA 1710, an initial full alarm assignment for a single family residential fire requires a minimum of 15 to 17 firefighters on the scene within eight minutes. A fire in a mid- or high-density building demands an even greater response. Without sufficient staffing, the department's ability to safely and effectively manage these complex incidents is severely compromised. Modern building construction compounds this problem with shorter timeframes; however the same number of jobs still need to be completed, but with far less time.

Did you know

Cochrane has 28 firefighter positions, however divided over the 4 platoon system this is a maximum of 7 firefighters on at any one time. This is a maximum number of staff, and is routinely lower. Even a single routine incident often requires all on-duty staff.

A successful outcome at a structure fire is a race against time, and every second counts. From the moment the first alarm sounds, firefighters are working to complete a series of critical, simultaneous jobs. There is no time to wait for help from a neighboring community that is 20 minutes away. The fire is doubling in size every 30 to 60 seconds, and the survivability of occupants is rapidly decreasing. This is why having sufficient, well-trained firefighters on duty at all times is not a luxury, but a necessity. The Initial Attack crews must have the staffing required to perform these life-saving tasks immediately, as the ability to save lives and property depends on getting the right number of personnel on the scene in the first critical minutes of the emergency.

Dealing with multiple simultaneous calls for service, even small ones, is extremely difficult with a small number of firefighters. When one crew is tied up at an incident, the department's ability to adequately respond to a second emergency is severely limited, if not impossible. This creates a critical gap in service delivery and puts the community at risk. The frequency of simultaneous emergency calls continues to grow.

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