Halifax fire department avoiding N.S. fire school

The Halifax Fire Department will graduate 19 firefighters from their in-house training program at the end of this week—and not one of them went to the provincial fire school.

They’re the first batch of students to skip out on using the school in “recent memory,” according to Dave Meldrum, deputy chief of Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency.

Many people are concerned about the safety issues at the Nova Scotia Firefighters School in Waverley right now, he said.

“Our employees are concerned about that too, and we continue to work through that process and conversation with them. So, during that time, it was prudent for us to just hold off and stay in our own facility.”

Meldrum said they’re waiting to get some documents related to the state of the burn building at the provincial school.

“Until we get the documentation, we would not book a date at the Fire School,” he said.

Last Week, both the Halifax and Truro firefighters unions along with the family of Skyler Blackie, a firefighter who died in 2019 because of faulty equipment at the school, renewed their calls for the leader of the provincial fire school to step down.

In August, a government investigation found the school had 41 safety infractions, which lead to a stop work order from the province.

Last week, the executive director of the school, John Cunningham, said he wouldn’t resign and that safety is one of the school’s top priorities.

“We recognize that there is still more work to be done, and we are fully committed to continuing this process,” wrote Cunningham.

In-house training is uncommon

The Halifax Fire Department is different than a lot of other fire departments, which typically use private academies, according to Meldrum. But the Halifax department does their own training.

They have used the provincial fire school as a training space, but they would bring their own equipment and instructors, he said.

Over the years, the department has both increased and decreased their use of the fire school, said Meldrum, based on whether the school is available or if other clients have it booked.

The designated training centre in the HRM is very small, Meldrum said, and they can’t burn wood at that location because a lot of people live nearby.

The fire school in Waverley has more buildings and more land for training, and they can burn wood there, all things the department appreciates, Meldrum said.

“Practicing your firefighting in the same small structure time and time and time again, it becomes quite monotonous, frankly, and we can add more learning value by offering them more variety in the scenarios that they face,” he said.

The department is hoping to get a larger training facility in Halifax, one that uses propane gas. On top of that, they’re looking for a larger training site in general, a large patch of ground that could be as big as 25 acres, to build a more capable facility, he said, but that would take several years.

Recruitment going strong

Despite any challenges they may face with a small training facility, they’re still training the most firefighters they can, which is about 40 a year.

That’s more than enough to account for retirements, and the department has nearly all their positions filled, said Meldrum.

Although the most recent class graduates Friday, they’ve already started trying to get more people to sign up for the fall session. Applications open Jan. 2.

On Tuesday night, they held an information session at Station 9 in Sackville.

They have 9 more from now until mid-January, including: