Callander’s fire chief assesses community risk

Callander’s fire chief Todd Daley presented his latest risk assessment, and happily reported the municipality is keeping safe. “Callander is a low-risk community,” he said, “but it requires everybody’s vigilance.”

So far so good on that front, the chief noted. “The fire department is very proud,” that people in Callander “are vigilant, are checking their smoke alarms, and are installing carbon monoxide detectors.”

Every five years, the Callander Fire and Emergency Services (CFES) must compile a risk assessment, detailing all calls and incidents, as the data helps prepare for and foresee possible future needs. The province mandates the document, and this year, Chief Daley presented a 59-page report.

The municipality spans 103 square kilometers, 10,277 hectares. The CFES is responsible to protect 7,826 of those hectares, whereas the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests covers the Crown land within the municipality, which spans 2,451 hectares.

However, if the Callander firefighters are first to respond to a Crown land fire, the ministry will compensate the municipality for services. The same goes if the province pitches in for a municipal fire, the town will have to compensate for those services.

In the past five years, “We have lost one residential structure” to fire, the chief said, “We’ve had seven fires related to structures, some as small as an electrical fire with an overloaded circuit” which could “potentially have destroyed a house.”

There are 1,568 residential properties in Callander, 516 of which are vacant. There are 62 farms, 40 commercial buildings, 18 industrial, two government, two institutional, and 12 deemed special purpose.

The report also details the dates of homes, as when a home was constructed informs the department about what to expect from the building’s materials. For example, increased laminates, and various composite materials “behave differently in a fire compared to traditional materials” used in older homes, the chief detailed.

A house fire can rage to the point of causing serious structural failures within three to six minutes, the chief said, and the Fire Department is usually on the scene within eight minutes.

Although fire incidents are low within Callander, Chief Daley still warned that “the riskiest hazard will always be fire.”

See: Fire destroys historic Callander complex 

Most of the fire calls are for vehicles, Daley added, and tractor-trailers. He also cautioned of the dangers of battery fires, and “not just electric vehicles,” he said, anything with a lithium ion battery. “Putting out those fires are very difficult” he said, “you have to smother it.” Often a fire like that will take about 5,000 gallons of water. A gas-powered vehicle fire takes about 800 gallons for comparison.

See: Toronto fire chief warns of lithium-ion batteries' risks after e-bike fire on subway

The chief also noted the “significant amount of hazardous material” that transports through Callander, and the Fire Department would like to increase its capacity to respond to hazmat incidents.

Ideally, the municipality could “increase resources to mitigate hazardous materials” to protect the water sources, which requires first responders to “control the spill early.”

Chief Daley’s full report can be found on the municipality's website.

David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.