Canadian Firefighter Magazine

Remarkable news

Laura King   

Features Blogs Editor’s blog

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

As Peter Mansbridge would say, some remarkable news today: the city of Regina has not had a single fire fatality in two years.

The Regina Fire Department credits changes to bylaws that include improved public education and mandatory hard-wired smoke detectors in rental properties.

Mayor Pat Fiacco said the fire department is “unique among fire services across North America in the way they prioritize public education and prevention services.”

“Their work,” he said, “and commitment has made a major difference to our community in saving lives and property."

There were an average of six fire fatalities annually in Regina in the 1970s; that number has since dropped to an average of one.

Impressive.



Halifax Fire Chief
Bill Mosher and Deputy Chief Stephen Thurber will be in court tomorrow to try
to find out the identities of people who criticized them on a website after
stories about racism in the department.

Like most news
outlets, an online publication called The Coast allows viewers to post comments
about its stories. This is a tricky business. We’ve considered it for our news
page at Fire Fighting in Canada but
after reading some of the comments on other fire-related websites sites we’ve
opted to continue pondering the value of this kind of interactive commentary.

Advertisement

Kyle Shaw, the editor of The
Coast, says the newspaper has the names of those who posted the comments and
intends to provide them to the firefighters.

 

The cover
story for our April issue of Fire Fighting in
Canada is about the growing popularity
of the 24-hour shift. Front-line guys seem to like it. Managers don’t. Our
story was posted online yesterday and you can read it here. Tell us what you
think.

 


Print this page

Advertisement

Stories continue below


Related