Discussions continue to mount among city councillors regarding the potential hiring of “flex firefighters” at the Grande Prairie Fire Department.
Cost control remains a top driver for the topic, as GPFD firefighters have been stretched thin over the past years, leading to excess overtime hours and fatigue among staff.
GPFD Chief Mark VanWerkhoven says council approved the concept of hiring two flex firefighters to explore the model and its potential benefits, and his report highlighted numerous benefits of moving towards a more flexible model for new firefighters.
“The newest firefighters within our ranks would be considered flex firefighters, meaning that we can dynamically move them from different shifts and different platoons where the need is greatest,” he says. “Today’s report essentially validated the overtime offset, and in fact exceeded the overtime offset that we predicted two years ago.”
Chief VanWerkhoven adds that the new model could include a significant number of both “qualitative and quantitative benefits” for both GPFD staff and residents alike.
“Of course the more firefighters we have in the community, the more we can deploy in the event of some sort of sustained incident,” he says. “In terms of mental health, fatigue, and just the overall culture and work environment, if we can limit that overtime and ensure that we can support vacation time and everything else that firefighters or any employee is looking for in terms of quality of life.”
VanWerkhoven describes the current model of off-duty callback on GPFD firefighters as “beneficial” for the community; however, the new model could be seen as a balancing act to ensure firefighters retain a high quality of life while providing essential services to the city.
“As urban of a fire department as we are, we still rely to a large extent, on off-duty callback any time we have any sustained event,” he says. “That’s a very beneficial model to our community, it’s worked well in our community for a long time, and it can continue to work really well in the community for some time to come, but it requires a careful balance.”
The discussion has now shifted to the potential hiring of four additional firefighters for the GPFD, and council is set to discuss the matter further in the weeks to come.
