Dorchester Fire and Rescue is proposing to develop its own training facility at a municipally-owned former dump site near Fort Folly First Nation.
The idea was presented to Tantramar council at its Sept. 28 committee of the whole meeting and will be on the consent agenda for the next regular council meeting on Oct. 13.
For years, Dorchester Fire and Rescue (DFR) has trained wherever it could—on both private and municipal property for pump operations or to cut up cars for auto extrication training—and for a long time, it could use buildings slated for demolition for live fire training. That’s no longer the case, and training is now less accessible and more time-consuming as firefighters must travel to outside communities, said Captain Dennis Reid when presenting to council.
“This in turn has left a noticeable gap in training. You know, 20 years ago when I started, we would get a couple buildings a year. It does not happen anymore.”
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The plan for the 4-acre site at 51 Cherry Burton Road is to install a concrete slab as a base for the training structure where they could run live fire exercises, and a paved area for auto extrication and hose operations, said Reid.
“ We’re proposing a multi-year project with the Dorchester Firefighters Association funding the groundwork, engineering, and the design of a three-can structure.”
The “cans” are shipping containers. Two will be stacked on top of one another and include interior and exterior staircases.
The Dorchester Firefighters Association has already allotted $15,000 for that engineering work, which includes drawing the plans, and is working with community partners to fundraise the purchase of the shipping containers. For now, the association isn’t asking for any investment from the municipality, though that may change when a backflow preventative hydrant is installed.
“Keeping in mind that this is a former dump site, and we will not be permitted to dig, so the hydrant would be located roadside, outside the dumpsite area,” said Reid. “We’re simply asking for the use of the location as a training ground and permission to develop it to better serve the need of DFR and Tantramar Fire Service.”
Councillor Alyssa Greene said she was in full support of the plan, which would be “a wonderful addition to our community,” but she did have some concerns.
“ One would be liability concerns with mischief and how we would mitigate that. . . and then, my final question would be how close, and this is the future development that you spoke of, how close are water lines and the potential for setting up the fire hydrant near there, and what expense would we be looking at potentially for that?”
Deputy Chief Sara Boyce, who answered questions with Reid after the presentation, said one of the reasons the site was chosen was that it was already secure and fenced off.
As for the potential hydrant, Reid didn’t estimate the cost, but said there was already one directly across the road. So, while the site would still need to install a hydrant on its side of the road, access to water lines is not an issue.
Deputy Mayor Josh Goguen was also concerned about liability for the municipality, but instead focused on potential environmental impacts of run-off from using large amounts of water at the site.
Boyce, who works in contaminated site management, said there has been a lot of consideration of that very concern and there will be a water diversion plan. She also noted the municipality is liable regardless of any development at the dump site, which would have been capped when it was first shut down and cleared to prevent contaminating the surrounding environment.
“ It’s been out in snow and rain. It’s had all kinds of weather conditions for, what, 40 years now. So the likelihood of us causing something to go wrong in that landfill from what we wanna do, I don’t see that happening at all.”
While the training centre is being developed for DFR, in response to a question from Councillor Wayne Wells, Boyce made sure to welcome her colleagues from Sackville and Point de Bute.
“ The Dorchester Association’s going to try and fund this because we need it. But that’s not to say that we’re going to exclude any of our brothers and sisters in any other departments. They’re always welcome over at our house.”
