CALEB NICKERSON

PONTIAC July 15, 2020

A local fire chief is angry with residents calling 911 for non-emergency situations.

Shawville Clarendon Fire Chief Lee Laframboise said that his department has received several calls in the past few weeks for things like people shooting off fireworks on Canada Day, or having a small bonfire in their back yard.

“Somebody calls 911 because someone’s setting fireworks off on Canada Day … really?” He said with exasperation. “I just want people to realize when they call 911 … [they] are getting 10 to 25 people . . .

out of bed or from supper, to come here and it costs the town a lot of money for stupidity. What … do they think the fire department’s going to do?”

He said that often they show up and either can’t find the source of the complaint (because the fireworks are no longer being set off) or they find someone with a bonfire completely under control.

“A wiener roast and a fire, there’s a little difference,” he said.

Laframboise said he suspected some were settling petty grievances with their neighbours by calling the fire department on them. He had strong words for those that called 911 for a clearly under-control fire and asked to remain anonymous.

“If they’re such a coward that they can’t even say who’s calling 911, that means … they think they shouldn’t be calling because it’s probably not an emergency,” he said.

Laframboise estimated that each non-emergency call costs the municipalities around $1,000, due to pay for the firemen and wear and tear on their vehicles. Besides the monetary cost, it is a huge expenditure of time for the volunteer firefighters who have to drop whatever they’re doing to respond to the call.

“We want calls that are emergency calls,” he said. “We have no problem coming to fires, no problem coming to accidents or if someone needs help, we have no problem helping them.”

He also suspected that part of the reason for the increase in these nuisance calls is due to the pandemic restrictions keeping people cooped up and bored for so long.

Waltham Fire Chief Larry Perry said that he’s dealt with some of these non-emergency calls in his jurisdiction.

“We’ve seen it, we’ve seen 911 calls that were absolutely inappropriate, people using the emergency service because they’re annoyed with a neighbour,” he said.

“Also it’s discouraging for firefighters … their mission is to put out fires and to attend traffic accidents and other types of rescues, it’s discouraging when you go to a scene and it’s a dispute between neighbours perhaps, or a frivolous thing like this,” he continued. “I think maybe COVID presents a stressor, brings out our less tolerant side, but I wouldn’t know I’m not a psychologist.”

However, Perry said he suspects the reason for some of these calls is that people aren’t sure of their municipality’s fire bylaws, since they can vary quite a bit.

“If the fire is in an enclosed device … in most jurisdictions at this moment they are not in violation of the bylaws,” he said. “Generally speaking in most municipalities, that’s acceptable and doesn’t violate the bylaw but neighbours sometimes don’t agree with that because they are getting mixed messages about what’s appropriate and what isn’t.”

In Shawville and Clarendon for example, screened in devices are allowed (except in certain communities that have a full ban like Sand Bay) but residents have to receive a permit from Laframboise. Waltham also allows screened in devices but doesn’t require a permit. Other municipalities have total bans.

Perry said that this confusion could be alleviated by the creation of a MRC-wide bylaw that would standardize the rules for the whole territory, a project he is currently working on with several other chiefs and MRC Fire and Public Safety Coordinator Julien Gagnon.

“If we do find an acceptable formula to deal with all the burning, hopefully it will become a full county bylaw that can be enforced by the SQ,” he said. “We’re not trained or equipped to do law enforcement or by-law enforcement. It’s not our role, but we get involved like it or not because people call 911.”

Perry was hopeful that they would be able to present a new bylaw to the council of mayors before the end of the year, but said that it would have to be approved by each of the municipal councils.

“As a county, we don’t have our act together, we have too many individual bylaws that differ … in their traditions and in their regulations, so it creates confusion,” he said. “That’s probably the biggest issue is people are being confused by not having a single authority to say, ‘This is what it is.’ That’s what we hopefully can get to.”

However not all fire halls are seeing an uptick in these types of calls. Kevin Kluke, the chief of the Bristol and Campbell’s Bay Litchfield departments said that it hasn’t been an issue this year.

“In Campbell’s Bay here, we only had one incident where a campfire was too big to start with, so we told them to dial it down, but no, I haven’t had much trouble, but I know it’s an issue for some places,” he said.

He added that the municipality of Bristol has hired a by-law officer that typically fields those types of calls.