Gibsons & District Volunteer Fire Department fire chief Rob Michael is commending the public for their respectful comportment Thursday night as they watched a helicopter take off from Dougall Park in Gibsons.
"When the helicopter's around, there's a great deal of public interest," said Michael, acknowledging that it's "cool to watch" the helicopter landing and taking off. The department asks that the public ensure they give patients privacy as they move from ambulance to helicopter, and found that the crowd last night did.
The Gibsons fire department had been called in at 10:49 p.m. to help BC Emergency Health Services attend to a woman in her late 60s who had fallen from a second-storey window onto a lower balcony and hit her head, said Michael. BC EHS had also requested a helicopter, which landed at Dougall Park.
The woman was "doing surprisingly well given the circumstances," said Michael.
The department had 20 firefighters attend the scene, with some on-site to assist the patient and some at Dougall Park to assist the helicopter landing.
Fire in the bush
Friday morning, the department was back at it, called out at 9:15 a.m. to a smouldering stump on fire. It was deep in the trails behind White Tower Park, apparently started by a discarded cigarette butt.
"It was a small, smouldering fire but the wind was starting to pick up and it was starting to heat up," said Michael, adding that it was in area that had a "tremendous amount of potential" to catch fire.
"It was very clearly from remnants of smoking material," he said, reminding the public there are open burning restrictions, Gibsons is at a "high" fire danger rating, and safe disposal of smoking materials is important this time of year (and year-round).
The fire was spotted when a passing pedestrian smelled smoke and investigated, said Michael. "What was really helpful there was, often people are in a rush to move on and get about their day, this individual stayed on site until the fire department arrived and showed us exactly where this was originating from."
Nine firefighters attended that incident, some who had attended the night before, some who hadn't been available last night. "That's the interesting part of the volunteer fire department, is availability can change from minute to minute," said Michael.
"But you can see we've got a fiercely dedicated crew who does what they can whenever they can and drops things at a moment's notice to attend to these emergency incidents."
