A new $30 million province-wide fire grant is going to help Timmins firefighters stay protected from hazardous carcinogens when fighting wildland fires, their deputy chief says.
Timmins will be receiving $49,382 from the province through the office of Solicitor General Michael Kerzner, who oversees the office of the fire marshal.
Local Deputy Fire Chief Scott Atkinson told the Daily Press on Monday, Jan. 6 those funds will be used to purchase 156 wildland fire jumpsuits.
“The cancer-preventative measure we’ve put forward for that would be coveralls for almost every firefighter in the city,” Atkinson said.
The grant, announced in December, applies to municipal firefighters, but the Timmins Fire Department is often called upon to fight grass fires and other wildland fires within the Municipal Protection Area (MPA) of the city.
“We do a lot of that. We’re in partnership with the MNRF (Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry). They’re the experts on forest fires, but we often work together,” said Atkinson.
“Inside the MPA forest fires or any bush that is on fire is our responsibility. We’ll pretty much go anywhere within our city limits, and if we can, we help the MNRA out as much as we can,” the deputy chief said, adding they have gone as far afield as down Highway 655 towards Sudbury during the last fire season.
Atkinson said his fire department has been touched by work-related cancer among retired fire fighters.
“What we’re trying to do—obviously the province is trying to do the same— is to get ahead of it with all the protection possible, because of the increased risks involved with the profession,” he said.
Atkinson plans to have the new coveralls purchased before the start of next spring’s grass fire season.
Rob Grimwood, president of the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs, told The Daily Press the challenge is province-wide.
“We have a significantly large number of firefighters who have been diagnosed with and unfortunately died from occupational cancer,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday, Jan. 6.
“There is a significant occupational risk of cancer in the fire service,” Grimwood said, adding there are 19 different occupational cancers linked to the profession for those who have served between 10 and 25 years.
Five years ago, the Ministry of Labour and a health and safety advisory committee of the Association of Fire Chiefs (Section 21 Committee) drafted the Firefighter Cancer Prevention Checklist.
“We worked with the Ministry of Labour’s hygienist and looked at all of the science and best practices to reduce exposure,” said Grimwood, who sits on the committee and was part of the project.
Some best practices include: decontaminating bunker gear immediately following a fire before the crews return to the station, washing bunker gear as quickly as possible after exposure, showering, keeping truck cabs clean, and defining clean and dirty areas within fire stations to prevent contaminants from entering living areas, just to name a few.
“That checklist has been working very well, and it provides a roadmap for fire chiefs to be able to make changes within their departments to prevent cancer,” Grimwood said.
However, within the last year, it became clear that some of the items on the checklist— such as each fire station having a specialized washing machine for bunker gear— were not in the budgets of many fire departments, especially smaller and rural ones.
The result was the Fire Protection Grant, designed by the office of Solicitor General Kerzner in partnership with the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs.
The $30 million grant will be disbursed in the amount of $10 million over three years. Cancer prevention will be the focus of the first year.
“This is to buy those washing machines, and drying racks, decontamination kits and to really implement the different initiatives within the firefighter cancer prevention checklist,” Grimwood said.
While the funds are intended for future purchases, “they can be used for 2024 purchases provided the purchases meet the criteria set out under the grant and are consistent with the given municipality’s approved application,” said Kerzner’s spokesperson Brent Ross.
Grimwood, who is also the Deputy Fire Chief for the City of Mississauga, shared how the funds will be spent in his fire department.
“We’re spending it on cleaning equipment to clean our self-contained breathing apparatus,” Grimwood said.
“We’re fortunate, we’re already well-equipped when it comes to cleaning bunker gear but where we have challenges is actually cleaning the breathing apparatus that firefighters wear. There are specialized washing units for those that we’re going to be purchasing.”