INSIDE

Fire district looking for a few good men and women

By Meg Olson

With less than 20 volunteers taking on the task of putting out fires and responding to medical emergencies on the Point, fire chief Bill Skinner would like to see more community members take on the task.

“Ideally I’d like to have 24 to 26 volunteers, and two thirds would live in Point Roberts and a good number could respond in the daytime,” Skinner said. What he has is 12 U.S. citizens and six Canadians, and he knows he’ll likely lose half of the members of the department if they can get full-time jobs as fire professionals.

For Jenny Kulbaba, the Point Roberts department is “a stepping stone, a training opportunity.” Kulbaba moved to Tsaw-wassen 14 months ago after graduating from a Canadian fire academy to join the department. David Opp has been with the department two and a half years, also a graduate of a fire academy north of the border and also looking for a career as a firefighter. “My passion came after September 11,” he said.

Both Kulbaba and Opp have received emergency medical technician (EMT) training while working as Point Roberts volunteers and are actively looking for jobs in larger fire departments. Eric Worrall, a U.S. citizen, said he “mostly got into it for the emergency medical end. I was thinking about being a doctor.” While a Point Roberts volunteer he has been trained as an EMT able to provide intermediate life support, and is now looking at a career in nursing.

“I find it a challenge because these are for the most part highly trained, valuable people and you know you’ll lose them,” Skinner said. The Point Roberts volunteer department has been a rung on the professional firefighting ladder since the mid-1990s, Skinner said, when many lower mainland fire departments began to expand. In one year eight firefighters whose training was paid for by the Point Roberts fire department left and joined lower mainland fire companies. “What’s developed since then is we don’t take anyone from Canada unless they’ve been to fire academy,” he said. “Initially people were wanting us to train them and then they’d leave for Vancouver fire departments.” Skinner said the minimum cost to train a firefighter is $1,000, and it goes up from there for medical training, vehicle training, specialized firefighting and rescue training.

Barrett Sleeman had no previous experience or training when he joined the fire department four years ago. He said he took on the task of being a volunteer firefighter out of civic responsibility. ”I don’t do it for the adrenaline rush, the recognition, anything like that,” he said. “I do it because it’s part of being responsible to the community.”

Sleeman is semi-retired but said he thought it was still feasible for someone working full-time to put in the 20 or 30 hours a month it takes to be a volunteer firefighter. “You just sacrifice other things,” he said. But he acknowledges being a volunteer takes a lot of time and commitment. “It’s serious stuff,” he said. “The people qualified to be with this department are qualified to be part of any fire department.”
Skinner acknowledged the time commitment was likely the major obstacle for people who were thinking of joining the department. The time demand may be more than most people can give,” he acknowledged. In addition to fire practice every Wednesday night and one weekend a month, volunteers are always in school: the recruit academy runs for three months, two nights a week and Saturdays, EMT school is similar, and ongoing training is required.

However, Skinner said, for Point Roberts to get dependable fire and emergency medical services from a volunteer department, there needed to be a larger base of committed local volunteers. “I’d like there to be more community people involved, people you could count on to stay longer,” he said. With low community participation the department can’t anticipate sudden dry spells, where the number of volunteers available for a daytime call slips to zero, as it did this April when the Delta fire department had to respond to a local aid call.

“As a volunteer department, if that’s what this community wants, it’s healthier to have more community participation.” Both Skinner, a pilot by profession, and deputy chief Nick Kiniski who owns the Reef Tavern started out Point Roberts volunteer firefighters with no prior training.

John Shields, who has been with the department for 23 years, started as a volunteer firefighter in Colorado and joined the local department when he moved to the Point. “I enjoy it and I enjoy giving back to the community,” he said. Shields said the department needed to convince community members that they had a role to play in their fire department.

“Most of the people here now have a fire background and that’s what we need to change,” he said.