Locals say it’s a regular occurrence in Brant County to see cars with flashing green lights — which indicate a volunteer firefighter is responding to a call — stuck in traffic, especially in the rapidly growing town of Paris.
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The municipality’s firefighting force is entirely volunteer, with nearly 200 community members serving across eight stations, including in Burford, St. George and Scotland, Darren Watson, the county’s fire chief, told The Spectator.
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In the 2023 budget, nearly $1.1 million was allocated to salaries, wages and benefits for the firefighting force.
These individuals typically live and work in the area, and often apply as a volunteer firefighter because they want to “give back to and help their community,” he said.
According to the most recent fire services annual report in 2022, volunteer firefighters responded to just over 800 emergency calls for all of the county that year, with more than a third of them in Paris.
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Volunteers need to live within six kilometers of a fire station so that when a call comes through on their pager, they can travel in their personal vehicle to the station and put on their gear before responding to the incident in a fire vehicle, Watson said.
While green lights do not give firefighters special rights on the road, they do indicate that a firefighter is responding in their personal vehicle to an emergency incident.
As a courtesy, other drivers are asked to “safely pull over to provide a clear path so that volunteers can get to the fire station as efficiently and safely as possible,” Watson said.
However, frequently that isn’t happening, locals say.
Carlie Mullin-Somerset lives in Paris and told The Spectator “at least once a month” she sees a volunteer firefighter trying to get through traffic — and no one lets them by.
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Community members discuss the same situation in a local Facebook group “way more often than that,” she said.
“People aren’t calling the fire department because they want to, there is an emergency and — depending on what it is — a minute can make a big difference,” Mullin-Somerset said.
Watson said this has always been an issue, but “with new residents moving from larger communities where they don’t have volunteer fire departments, they are unaware of the flashing green lights and their purpose,” he said.
Increased traffic in the area poses an additional challenge.
Mullin-Somerset said there are a few explanatory signs in town, but it’s easy to miss them.
“They’re pretty small. And I think people coming from other communities just assume that the system is the same as where they came from,” she said.
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To help mitigate travel times, the north end of Paris — which has experienced increasing development over the last number of years — will be getting a dedicated fire station.
Some of the existing Paris firefighters will transfer to that station, based on their location, and additional recruits are undergoing training, “that certifies them to NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) 1001 Firefighter level I & II,” Watson said.
As some communities expand, they shift from a volunteer to a career or hybrid fire department, taking into account factors like “call volume and a community risk assessment,” Watson said, but the county isn’t there yet.
In the meantime, Watson said the green lights and the public’s understanding of them is “that much more important.”
Mullin-Somerset said she would “love to see real estate agents and the developers have a flyer in their buyers package when they buy a house,” adding that if somebody would fund flyers, “I would volunteer to hand them out!”
Celeste Percy-Beauregard is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at the Hamilton Spectator. The initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
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