Otter Lake council voted at its Feb. 10 council meeting to appoint longtime firefighter Ronnie Vadneau to the position of fire chief, replacing Denis Chaussé.
Vadneau has served on the Otter Lake Fire Department for 34 years. He spent his childhood accompanying his dad, Rodney Vadneau, on calls. Rodney served on the Otter Lake department for over 50 years, spending 46 of them as chief.
“He would get home from his shift work, he said, ‘Son, get in the car and stay there,’ so I guess it was baptism by fire [ . . . ] You look out and say that it would be cool to be on that red fire truck,” he said.
Vadneau said his 34 years of experience with the fire department have allowed him to learn a lot from other firefighters, whether they were in Otter Lake or in other departments.
“Watching the past fire chiefs and what they’ve gone through and how they’re running the department, I’ve taken all that in and that has given me that confidence to move up in the department,” he said.
Vadneau said one of the biggest issues for the department right now is staffing. With 19 active members and three Firefighter 1 trainees, he said the trend is going in the right direction but he will continue to recruit new members. He said staffing numbers can always be higher, especially during the daytime.
“One my main priorities is to get more people involved [ . . . ] It’s hard to have the younger folks stay up and around throughout the day,” he said.
He also intends to improve communications from the town of Otter Lake up to areas of the Territoire non-organisé (TNO). Currently, the department has a satellite phone that can communicate in remote areas, but Vadneau would like to see two-way radios that can communicate via towers.
Given the sometimes-traumatic nature of being first responders, he said he intends to keep having debriefing meetings with firefighters after each call. He said the meetings are intended to discuss how the call went and how firefighters felt about it.
“Some of them are bad because we deal with a lot of medical. We’ve had heart attacks and stuff, car accidents, motorcycle accidents [ . . . ] We do come back after every intervention and then we discuss the whole situation and how people feel, and then if somebody still doesn’t feel well about it, when we look for some outside help,” he said, referring to specialized therapists for first responders that deal with PTSD and trauma.
Otter Lake, like many Pontiac municipalities, was hit with wildfires last summer. Vadneau said one focus for this summer will be to make sure that people know about the fire bans and are following them.
“We’ve always had this type of fires, but some of them are man-made as well. If there’s a ban out, follow the ban. If there’s restrictions on your fire pits, please follow those. We need human intervention to stop some of these fires, and it starts with the individual.”
He said the municipality takes advice from Quebec fire protection agency SOPFEU – professionals who are trained to know and recognize the conditions. When the municipality puts on a fire ban, it is because these experts are advising them to do it.
“They’re professionals and experts. For us just to say that we’ll throw on a ban doesn’t always just mean that we’re throwing on a ban just because we want to.”
He said through signs, social media and the municipality’s website the municipality is doing what it can to communicate bans to the public. But at the end of the day, it’s up to everyone – including seasonal residents – to do their part.
“People come up and say, ‘Well, I have an AirBnb up here and all of a sudden you’re telling me I can’t have a fire now for a week. This is why we’re up in the country.’ I said, ‘Well, you’re up in the country, but the fires are still going. It’s all over the news, it’s everywhere.”
Former chief Denis Chaussé was not available for an interview on the changeover. Vadneau said Chaussé, who has been chief since 2018, has been an outstanding chief during his tenure.
“He’s brought our department up, especially for how he takes care of all the background stuff. It’s just unbelievable, dealing with so many departments, Sécurité civile [ . . . ] The paperwork stuff that he’s been keeping up, our schedules, our money, equipment and our budgets. He’s done so much work to bring the department back up to where it is right now.”
