Changing polices on how the City of Duncan deals with burning complaints has a number of business owners along the highway corridor concerned.
Graeme Blackstock, owner of the Duncan Butcher Shop located at 140 Trans-Canada Hwy., said in the early hours of the morning on Nov. 10, what apparently was a warming fire was started just inches from his compressor building at the rear of his business on Whistler Street.
He said a neighbour called 911 twice to report the fire but nothing happened so the neighbour, concerned that the fire could spread into the Duncan Butcher Shop and surrounding buildings, took the initiative and put the fire out himself.
Blackstock was concerned by the lack of response from the Duncan Fire Department and called the City of Duncan.
He said he was informed that there has been such an increase in the number of burning complaints in the city recently and a decision was made that unless the fire calls concern structures, the Duncan fire department is no longer responding to them.
“My concern here is for my business and livelihood, as well as the safety of my employees and customers,” said Blackstock, who has had to deal with other fires started close to his business over the years, as have other businesses in the area.
“This has been a growing concern in the area for a long time. I’ve been in operation here for 13 years, and these problems started about 10 years ago when we saw the first influx of the street community in this area.”
Duncan fire chief Landis Carmichael told council at a meeting last May that there has been a substantial increase in burning complaints in the city this year.
He said that if the burning complaints, which are mostly intentionally set garbage fires and/or warming and camp fires, in Duncan continued at the pace they were at the time, the fire department would be on track to hit a whopping 844 calls by the end of the year.
“Due to the extreme increase of burning complaints, the city is working to implement an arrangement to use city bylaw enforcement during the day to answer some of the burning complaints, as well as a security contractor for these responses at night,” Carmichael told council at the time.
Don Hatton, the owner of Duncan’s Hatton Insurance Agency and the insurer of a number of businesses in the highway corridor, warned that if the city has chosen not to respond to the burning complaints, insurance rates for businesses and properties in the city would skyrocket, if they could get insurance at all, and that would leave many of them uninsurable and unprotected.
Duncan CAO Peter de Verteuil acknowledged that the fire department has been experiencing a significant rise in non-emergency calls related to minor burning complaints, which include small cooking fires and beach fires.
De Verteuil said these types of calls often capture other unwanted behaviour such as nuisance, loitering, trespass, and open-drug use, which are issues that are outside of the scope of a fire department’s role as some of these behaviours constitute criminal activity that should be addressed by law enforcement agencies.
“Effective in early October, we advised fire dispatch that the department would continue to respond to unattended fires; however, non-emergency minor burning complaints that have individuals on site should be treated no differently than other loitering or other unwanted persons on a property,” he said.
“In the past, the fire department would ask for enforcement personnel to accompany when individuals were on site. With the change to fire dispatch, the enforcement personnel can request the fire department to attend with them when fire suppression is required. The city is continuing its efforts to find an effective response to minor burning complaints where security staff and/or enforcement personnel are also needed in order to deal with those exhibiting difficult behaviours that elevate risk to fire fighters and other members of the public.”
De Verteuil said that with the dramatic increase in the number of burning complaint calls, this adjustment allows the fire department to prioritize emergency response readiness and better allocate resources to true fire suppression and emergency situations, and it also ensures that enforcement-related incidents are handled by the appropriate agencies.
“However, this particular incident has identified that some improvements can be made to clarify instructions to dispatch, and to better coordinate the response with RCMP and other enforcement staff for minor burning complaints,” he said.
“The city, fire department, and RCMP are actively reviewing those instructions with a view to improve our collective response.”
