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Cadet Camp 2017

This year’s Cadet Camp will be held on Thursday, March 23. The spring breaks overlap for most school districts so demand for the 20 available spots will be high.

Kids aged 10-14 are welcome to register on our online registration page.

The Hornby Island Fire Rescue cadet camp is a one day workshop where our firefighters teach important fire prevention, safety, and first aid skills. Lunch is provided and the camp is free of charge. All participants and their parents are invited back to the fire hall in the evening where the cadets will demonstrate the skills that they learned during the day.

You can also register your young firefighters by calling the fire hall at 250.335.2611 and leaving a message with the cadet’s name, age, and a contact phone number.

High Angle Dog Rescue

We got a call that began as a duty officer question about rescuing a dog over a cliff. Chief La Rose and Captain Chinnery went to the scene to investigate and discovered a pitbull about 25m down a 50m cliff.  We did a general page to activate our members and put a rope rescue operation into effect.

We sent the chief over the edge with a “diaper harness” designed for a human and a few bits of rope and slings to make up a harness that would fit the pit bull. Apparently the dog was very happy to see Chief LaRose and the biggest challenge after securing the dog was that he wouldn’t stop licking the Chief’s face.

The Chief on the the end of the rope rescuing a pit bull over the cliff

We were able to haul them back up to the top using our 5-1 haul system. Everyone was fine, including the dog, and we were able to make it back to our respective homes for New Year’s Eve dinners.

Donated Building Gets Good Use

Hornby Island Fire Rescue-6Donated buildings or “acquired structures” are a mixed blessing. On one hand they provide excellent experience and on the other, they are a tonne of work to make them safe enough to use for practice. Many departments don’t use them anymore, preferring to use concrete training structures. Here on Hornby, we have no such structure and are remote enough that getting to an off island facility is often impractical.

Hornby Island Fire Rescue-21After ensuring that the building is safe, we start with a few weeks of practices using theatrical smoke to work on our search and rapid attack skills. Once everyone is familiar with the structure, and we have our apparatus and hose deployment honed, we do several practices where we light and extinguish small fires in the building.

The week before we are scheduled to burn it down we run a few evolutions of attacking a fairly large fire to simulate a “room and contents” fire. It is in those evolutions that we can really exercise our attack skills.

The weekend that we burn the building to the ground is the one that the public notices but is the least useful practice of the months of use that we have gotten out of the structure.Hornby Island Fire Rescue-17

Thanks to Don Peterson for the photos and to Bill and Jae at the Four Corners property for donating this cabin to us.

Abandoned 911 Calls

The recent line of duty shooting of Lac-Simon police member Officer Thierry Leroux is a tragic event. HIFR sends condolences to his family, friends, and co-workers. While not an abandoned 911 call, it does highlight some of the dangers of walking into a domestic disturbance situation.

Here on Hornby Island, especially during the non-summer months, we have a very limited police presence. As a result, HIFR is occasionally called out to investigate abandoned 911 calls. If a 911 caller hangs up before the dispatcher feels that the situation is resolved, someone must attend the scene to ensure everyone is OK. Normally that is the job of the police, but since they are two hours away we sometimes get the call to “have a look”.

The RCMP tries to vet the call so that if there is an obvious threat they won’t put us in harm’s way, but it can be very hard to tell with just a hangup on the other end. Is the caller in the middle of a heart attack and unable to speak? Was the caller cleaning the phone and accidentally hit the 911 speed dial? Or is there a domestic disturbance and the caller was unable to get a message across?

It is an agonizing decision for the HIFR Duty Officer to refuse to attend the scene knowing that they could be putting themselves and the rest of the crew in peril but also knowing that a fellow islander could be in trouble. We have the right to refuse to attend these calls and sometimes make the decision to do so.

If you should accidentally make a 911 call, please do not hang up. Stay on the line and explain to the dispatcher what has happened. You will save several people a great deal of time and stress.