Right now the numbers game is not playing out in favour of the Rankin Inlet Fire Department (RIFD).
Rankin Fire Chief Mark Wyatt said upcoming vacation times and firefighters preparing to move away to further their education creates a horrible situation for the department.
He said he currently has a great group of new recruits who are doing awesome within the department. However, four of them, he believes, are preparing to go off to school in the fall for post-secondary studies.
“I get some of the best kids in town joining the fire department, but, suddenly, they have to go and improve their lives, which is completely understandable,” said Wyatt. “I completely support continuing education.
“Honestly, we're to the point where we need to recruit a bunch of new people, because our call volume is becoming unsustainable.
“We're at about 440 calls already this year. Most of them are medical, but you need to have people on call, day and night, ready to respond.”
For a number of weeks now, Wyatt said he and Deputy Fire Chief George Aksadjuak often find themselves in situations where they must go out and do calls on their own – although sometimes they do have bylaw officers available to help.
He said it's mostly new recruits handling almost all ambulance calls at the present time.
“The summer is looking pretty bleak at the moment and I need to recruit more people to address the situation. And, there needs to be some people dedicated to calls here during the day.
“Sometimes, we'll have calls where we need three people to show up, plus the fire department. When you have bylaw officers hired to do bylaw, and you have fire chiefs hired to do primarily fire stuff, it would be nice to have extra help with the medical calls.
“It has become frustrating, but we're working on it.”
Wyatt said the RIFD usually does one recruitment drive per year.
The department was recruiting during the fall months last year, which resulted in six new members joining its ranks. Wyatt described all six as “exceptionable,” but will be losing four of them this coming fall.
“I need to refill those positions, plus add a few more. There's always turnover, in terms of people who have been in the department for awhile leaving.
“We lost a few people this past year, some of whom just got really busy, moved away, had personal issues, or the job itself became too much for them. There's all sorts of reasons why people leave the department throughout the year.
“The average length of time on the job in the RIFD is about five years. Right now, including everyone leaving, plus George and I, we have 20 people in the department. That may sound like a lot, but, of those, I may have 12 who are active in terms of responding regularly and coming to practice.
“The number that would make me happy is 30 volunteers. We have a ways to go, but, again, we're working on it.”