Gibsons and District Volunteer Fire Department fire chief Rob Michael gave his quarterly report at the Jan. 17 Town of Gibsons committee of the whole, announcing that the department is back up to a full complement of 46 members, including 10 new recruits.
In the last quarter of 2022, the department responded to 121 calls for service compared to 91 in the same period the previous year. Call outs included five structure and two vehicle fires as well as an out-of-jurisdiction vehicle incident.
The Nov. 4 windstorm accounted for 20 of those calls, said Michael’s report. “The event had firefighters moving from incident to incident attempting to prioritize the most severe public hazards,” he said. “It was concerning that firefighters had to regularly return to sites to replace flagging and other public safety barriers as they were being torn down by members of the public.”
Asked about the fire department’s perspective on there being taller buildings in Gibsons, Michael said that the threshold of high rises significantly increases the number of firefighters required to respond to incidents, “that would perhaps be very taxing on the Sunshine Coast.”
“The fire department is seeing a number of development proposals that are reaching these thresholds,” said Michael, adding that comments are provided when the department receives development referrals by the Town. “We’re not resistant, we’re expecting that we’re going to see some densification within our boundaries, we’re trying to reasonably grow at the same pace.”
He highlighted that they have mutual aid agreements with neighbouring departments for support in response.
