Fire Chief looks forward to 2024 with growth in department

Cochrane fire chief Shawn Polley is all smiles when looking ahead to 2024. 

He says there is so much to look forward to in the coming year including four additional full-time firefighters who will be added to the roster in April.

"With our current population being around 36,000 folks and an annual call volume of about 1200 calls. That means one firefighter will be on each of the four platoons, so it brings our staffing numbers up to seven full time staff on each platoon." 

One of the biggest accomplishments for Cochrane Fire Services in 2023 was the completion of the Fire Master Plan.

"It's a really guiding document for fire services. It's been about five or six years since we had our previous one completed. This one's focus was really around community engagement, discussions, talking with our staff and really getting down to what is important for them to see us, where we can provide additional efforts, and where we're missing out on community engagements." 

The plan is good for 10 years but Polley says based on community growth they will likely have to revisit it again after five years. 

It was another busy year for local fire fighters. 

"We've gone to 1192 events this year in 2023 so far, we're trending to be just over 1200. It's pretty normal for us. It is a 3.5 per cent increase over 2022's volumes."   

Polley says they responded to 41 fire events which were largely due to the improper disposal of smoking material.

"It can just be simply a cigarette in a planter and then it starts the siding on fire in a home and it causes problems and challenges."

Fire Chief Shawn Polley popped into 91.5 CochraneNow before Christmas

Polley credits the Town of Cochrane's Emergency Management Plan for helping to navigate the water and wastewater incident that occurred in October.  

The Town was sent into a State of Emergency after a water and wastewater line were ruptured. 

"We just basically turned to page one and we started working our way through the challenge that was presented."

"I'm really proud of the efforts that the whole team did. We staffed the Emergency Coordination Centre (ECC) with a large group of folks in all the different key areas and when we started to do our demobilization at the tail end of the event, the documentation unit was key in making sure our documents were all well connected and these are the specifics of how the emergency management plan works."

Looking ahead to 2024, Polley says Town Council has set out four objectives for Cochrane Fire Services to deliver on, and there will be something big and exciting coming to our community in the next few months on the emergency management side of things.

"A great opportunity just recently presented itself to us, it's more of a 'can't wait to talk about it.' says Polley. "It'll be a great opportunity for us to express our emergency management skills in a very outwardly way."

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