The master fire plan is the hottest read in West Nipissing, and within those 254 pages are recommendations to close some municipal firehalls. Rest assured no final decisions have been made, but council will discuss these recommendations to close at an upcoming meeting.
The municipality has nine firehalls – or fire stations as outlined in the master plan – and the report’s authors recommend that Fire Station 3 be permanently closed.
Station 3 is the small, one car-garage sized white building at 1377 Tomiko Road, in Crystal Falls. The recommendation is to close that station and cover the Crystal Falls area with Station 2, at 552 Crystal Fall Road, within Crystal Falls.
The report also recommends the municipality close Station 9, at 13 Waterfront Drive in Cache Bay. If that shuts down, Fire Station 1, the main firehall next to the municipal building at 225 Holditch Street in Sturgeon Falls, would cover Station 9’s ground.
There could be one more on the closure list, as well. The report recommends the municipality reach out to French River to discuss a fire protection agreement between the two districts. If one can be struck, the recommendation is to close Station 8, on Highway 64 in North Monetville.
The report also recommends consolidating Station 6 (on Principale Street in Verner) and Station 7 (Highway 64 in Lavigne) “to a central area between the two communities of Verner and Lavigne.”
The Fire and Emergency Services Master Plan was put together by Behr Integrated Solutions, which for the past ten months has been looking into all aspects of West Nipissing’s emergency services. In March of 2023 Fire Chief Frank Loeffen requested funds from council – around $50,000 – to hire consultants and fund the plan.
Council agreed, and the funds for the study came from a provincial grant called the Modernization Fund the municipality had received a few years back. The province has mandated all municipalities create a Fire and Emergency Services Master Plan.
Tim Beckett and Isaac Comandante, of Behr Integrated Solutions, presented that report to council at its last meeting.
Essentially, as Chief Loeffen detailed last March, “the idea of the plan is to develop long-range strategic planning framework to guide the priorities and objectives of the West Nipissing Fire Department.” The recommendations within will help guide the municipality for the next few years when making decisions concerning the fire department.
See: West Nipissing turns up heat on Fire Master Plan
“Our goal was to examine all aspects of your fire department,” Becket explained, “and develop a seven-year master plan and a community risk assessment.” The document covers all aspects of service, with emphasis on “firefighter safety, improved cost control and containment within the service, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the department, and identifying the right-sized service” for the community’s needs, Becket detailed.
The recommendations to close or merge the above-mentioned fire stations could help achieve those objectives, the report outlines.
There were many recommendations within the report, and plenty of details for council to consider. As such, “we will be carving these [issues] out,” noted West Nipissing’s CAO, Jay Barbeau, “and bringing them individually to council” for further consideration.
“We’ll be providing room for discussion and fulsome debate,” when that time arrives, Barbeau noted.
The full Fire and Emergency Services Master Plan will be posted to the municipality’s website. A copy of Beckett's and Comandante's presentation can be found here.
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.
