Jeff Kirk has seen more than his fair share of pain and suffering.
A career firefighter with more than 40 years of experience, the chief of the Springwater Township fire and emergency services has been called out at all hours of the day and night to attend fires, crashes and medical emergencies.
Surprisingly, given his exposure to unsavoury events, there’s one thing that continues to frustrate him — people who don’t install smoke alarms in their home.
“Our focus is on fire safety,” he said during a recent interview at the township’s fire hall in Minesing. “If you have a good fire prevention and public education program, you’re definitely going to have less fires.
“It’s a proven statistic,” Kirk added.
Required outside sleeping areas since 1997, the Ontario Fire Code made smoke alarms mandatory on every level of a home and outside all sleeping areas in 2006.
For homes built after 2014, smoke alarms are also required inside each bedroom.
“I’ve been at this a long time and that’s one of my biggest frustrations,” Kirk said. “You’ve only got a couple of minutes and if you don’t get warned about the fire there’s a high probability that you’re not going to get out.”
According to Kirk, a house fire today is not the same as one 50 years ago.
The main reason is the chemicals and additives that can be found in many household furnishings, from rugs and sofas to clothing and fixtures.
“Years ago, you had about four minutes to escape a house fire,” Kirk said. “Today, you’re got about two minutes. Fires today, because of the chemicals that are now part of almost everything that’s made, burn hotter and quicker and can be quite toxic.
“That’s why we stress early detection — you don’t have much time.”
According to Kirk, who manages a contingent of five career staff and upward of 100 volunteers, change has been the only constant in his career.
“When I started, the first line of defense was response,” he said. “Right now, the first line of defense is fire prevention and then public education. Response has become the third line of defense."
Fortunately, as response has dropped to third place, so have structure fires.
In Springwater, Kirk noted, many of the calls the service responds to today are vehicle collisions. They’re followed by medical emergencies, structure fires, woodland fires and agricultural rescues.
“We get seven or eight calls a year for people stuck in the Minesing swamp,” he said. “We don’t have the equipment to get to them in a lot of cases and we’ve had to rely on the Ontario Provincial Police helicopter to pluck them out.”
A vast tract of land with few identifiable landmarks, the fire and emergency service has tried “pinging” the cell phones of those who get lost in the swamp using an app called what3words, a navigation tool that divides the world into three-metre squares, each with a unique three-word address.
It allows users to pinpoint locations with greater accuracy than traditional addresses or GPS co-ordinates, making it useful for navigation, emergency services and sharing specific locations.
Drone on the wish list
Kirk says the service is thinking of buying a drone that could be used in those situations where cellphone connections are weak or don’t exist.
“With a drone, we could use it as a search device or we could use it to transport basic items like water to lost individuals,” he said. “We could also use it for fire investigations, because it can get up and over the top, allowing us to see something far different than when you’re on the ground.”
When Kirk started his career, drones were just beginning to be used in commercial applications, mainly in the world of aerial photography.
He never thought they’d find a place in his line of work.
But, like virtually every other aspect of firefighting, advances in technology have been leveraged and harnessed to either protect or assist individual firefighters.
Kirk says the biggest change he’s encountered — and the one he’s most grateful for — is the firefighter’s personal protection equipment.
“When I started, we had a patch coat and hip waders,” he said. “You could feel the heat right through them. Now, we’re encasing our firefighters in all this fire-retardant gear.”
While expensive — it costs about $5,500 to outfit a single firefighter and all of the gear must be replaced every 10 years; the retired gear is donated to other countries that can’t afford the new stuff — it’s money well spent as it protects the fire and emergency service’s most precious asset. That would be its people, who, for the most part, are volunteers.
They come from all walks of life and all corners of the township.
“We have a lot of new residents in Springwater,” Kirk said. “Many of them have come from municipalities that have full-time fire services, so they have a different expectation of what emergency response is.
“Because we are a volunteer service, it takes us a bit longer for a turnout to occur because our volunteers are driving from all across the township to get to the station.” he added.
Springwater fire and emergency services has four stations, including Midhurst Station No. 2 at 1453 Snow Valley Rd., Minesing Station No. 3 at 2303 Ronald Rd., Hillsdale Station No. 4 at 1 Albert St. E., and Elmvale Station No. 5 at 7 Patterson St.
A fifth is also being built at 1132 Snow Valley Rd.
Kirk says he hopes to have staff moved into the new facility in the first quarter of 2026.
In a few years, as the township's population continues to grow, he hopes to be able to house more career firefighters in those stations.
“We’re definitely going to see the fire department grow as the population grows,” Kirk said. “We’re on the cusp of having to do something. I’m leaning more towards adding more career staff.”
One of his ideas is to start with a part-time model and then move it into five days a week, Monday to Friday, from eight in the morning until six at night.
“You’ve got a career complement there and then eventually go to a 24/7 complement,” he said. “A lot of municipalities have done that to ease the transition and ease the burden to the taxpayer.”
Kirk is quick to acknowledge adding more career firefighters will have an impact on residents’ tax bills.
“We’ve relied on volunteers for a long time,” Kirk said. “At some point, I don’t know when that will be, we’ll be forced to increase our career component.
“At some point, you have to accept that you have to pay for safety and security.”