‘Hey you!’ – Firefighter recruits volunteers at house fire to help hand lay a supply line
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At 3:45 on the video above by Teresa Kennedy a fire captain shouts “Hey you!” and asks the public for help in hand laying a supply line at a house fire Saturday in Vernon, British Columbia. It’s a department that recently reduced staffing on its apparatus.
Doris Maria Bregolisse, Global News:
The incident is tripping off alarm bells for the fire fighters union.
“It puts us at a huge risk, obviously and obviously the public at a huge risk as well,” says Brent Bond, president of the Vernon Professional Fire Fighters Association.
The fire chief (Keith Green) was forced to change the response model in November due to budget constraints, sending two instead of four firefighters to the scene of an incident and having volunteer fire fighters respond to help.
“I would always expect and would want four people on a piece of apparatus, however there are times when we have to make tough decisions and that’s one of the tough decisions I had to make,” says Green.
“This puts the captain in a absolute terrible position,” says Bond. “Where initial reports were there’s people possibly stuck inside, and it goes against all WorkSafe BC rules. It also increases the hazardous situation for us, the hazardous situation for the public and also increases the liability to the city greatly.”
