One of the trucks from the Greenfield and District Volunteer Fire Department that went off the road on Sunday en route to fighting a fire near White Point. (Greenfield and District Volunteer Fire Department Facebook page)

The Greenfield and District Volunteer Fire Department may have lost two trucks on Sunday to icy roads near White Point, but its firefighters still helped battle a house fire.

Chief Moyal Conrad described the dangerous driving conditions he had to deal with as his crews responded to a call for help from the Liverpool Fire Department.

“We left here. It was a sunny day. There was no snow in the air. The closer we got to Liverpool, the snow was coming down. Reports were the house was fully involved and the roads were treacherous. I was driving the first truck for Greenfield. The road was really, really slippery. The first turn we almost didn’t make. I went in about a couple hundred yards and stopped and rethought my choices. We were only hundreds of yards away from the scene, so we proceeded very, very cautiously. Every turn we tried to make, the truck had a mind of itself.

“The front tires would not steer at all. Every time we went towards the ditch until we hit the hard crushed snow and it bounced back on. … There was a downhill turn at the end and as we were going down the hill, she just kept sliding, sliding, sliding and she just got to the edge and all of a sudden the front tires caught the hard snow and bounced back on the road. When it did that, it slingshot my ass end then my truck into the ditch. It put a brand new 2023, million-dolar truck into the ditch.”

Conrad was in the truck with his son Brandon, who is also the deputy chief. The chief says he’s grateful they escaped unhurt.

“I was basically holding on to him saying, ‘Oh my god, we’re going off, Brandon.’ It’s a very sickly feeling when you have no control of what you’re driving.”

The other tanker truck from Greenfield that went off the road on Sunday in icy conditions. (Greenfield and District Volunteer Fire Department)

Firefighters from Liverpool, Greenfield, North Queens, Port Medway and Mill Village responded to the blaze off the White Point Road on Sunday. That was during a freezing rain warning, which made already slick side roads in the area even more dangerous.

Conditions were so bad that a salt truck also ended up in the ditch.

The Greenfield department sent two tankers. Soon after Conrad’s truck left the road, another tanker from Greenfield coming the other way also slid off the road and landed on its side.

Nobody was injured in either case. And two of the crewmembers from the second truck walked to the scene and spent the rest of the day helping fight the fire, even though it was difficult to stand on the icy roads.

“And they fought fire for the rest of the afternoon and the evening and our rescue truck come along with four other firefighters that made it to the scene and they were on scene fighting fire all afternoon, all evening.”

Conrad says the truck he was driving was a newer model the department bought in 2023. He believes that one can be fixed. The other tanker was an older model from 2017 that was extensively damaged and will probably have to be replaced.

A new tanker truck costs about $1.2 million, he said.

He said he hopes insurance will help cover the costs of repairs and replacement. And there may be some money available through the Region of Queens, which provides up to $425,000 over 10 years for new equipment.

But any insurance payout will cover only what the department paid for the truck, not its replacement cost, Conrad said. So, the fire department could still be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

Most of that would have to be raised through the volunteer firefighters’ fundraising efforts like community breakfasts or the Nova Scotia Firefighters 50/50 draw.

“We need to think a lot of things out,” Conrad says. “Queens County doesn’t have a big tax base. We do not have a lot of money to work with. We do a lot of fundraising just to keep the lights on. We have to flip a lot of eggs sometimes in order to buy these trucks.” 

Conrad says they get about $80,000 a year from the Region of Queens to help run the department, half of which goes to keep the hall open. 

“That does not buy equipment, that does not train my men. All that stuff is done by the great people of this county when the fire departments put out their hands (for fundraising) … If it wasn’t for the fundraising, us out here in the country, it makes it hard to be able to purchase stuff. We had a truck plan and that truck plan has gone right out the window at the moment.”

Even so, he said he’s hopeful that things will work out.

“On a good note, in the last two days, I’ve taken a ton of calls and emails from people who want to help out. I just got a message from a fire chief in Prince Edward Island who wants to help us out.”

And he said the neighbouring North Queens Fire Association has loaned them one of their older tankers. So, he said the Greenfield department is still able to respond to fire or medical emergencies.

“We’re not defeated yet. We have the gear and we have the trucks. Members are keen. I don’t want to take away from anybody else’s fundraising, but think of us the next time we have a breakfast or something and come out and help us out.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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The North Queens Fire Association bought a new rescue truck in December 2023 to respond to medical emergencies and other calls. (North Queens Fire Association Facebook page)

The fire chief in North Queens wants answers about why his department isn’t being called to more medical emergencies in the community.

Chris Wolfe, who leads the volunteer-run North Queens Fire Association in Caledonia, says he’s worried that residents aren’t getting the help they need and someone could die because of it.

“We’re supposed to get called for pretty well anything that the ambulance will come out to North Queens for and that hasn’t been the case here lately,” he told QCCR.

“My concern is that the community’s not getting the help that they need when they need help the most. You take an ambulance takes an hour basically get to North Queens and even longer if you’re in a storm, so potentially somebody could be lying there for an hour without medical help.”

That’s why Wolfe has organized a public meeting on March 3 at 7 p.m. at the North Queens Fire Hall in Caledonia at 9793 Highway 8.

He’s invited officials from Emergency Medical Care and Emergency Health Services, as well as Queens MLA Kim Masland, who is also the minister of emergency management, and Health Minister Michelle Thompson. Wolfe is also encouraging residents to attend.

Wolfe expressed his frustration in a recent Facebook post. He also posted last August asking residents to contact him if they’ve called 911 in the past expecting the fire department to respond.

A post on the North Queens Fire Association Facebook page from Chief Chris Wolfe.

“I’ve previously had meetings with EMC and EHS and we’ve talked about it and I thought things were going to get straightened out but obviously they didn’t and we did have one particular call there the night before I posted that and the individual was lying outside in the snow and they weren’t going to page the fire department for it.

“We ended up going over on our own terms and dealing with it till EHS arrived so that was my pet peeve that sent me to put the post on Facebook.”

Emergency Health Services contracts out ambulance and paramedic service in Nova Scotia to Emergency Medical Care, which is owned by Medavie Blue Cross. EMC also operates the province’s 911 call centre.

EMC officials declined an interview request. A spokesman said in an emailed statement that they “are committed to continuing the conversation to address” the fire department’s concerns.

Wolfe said 18 of the first responders at his department are certified under the Medical First Response Program, which trains people to care for someone who is injured. He said they responded to 111 medical calls last year, which account for between 65 and 75 per cent of what they do.

But he said they could potentially respond to more calls and more quickly than EHS, if only they knew about them.

It’s a situation that rural fire departments are dealing with around the province, he says. 

“When you become an MFR agency you choose what level of response you want to be and where we’re so far from a hospital or anything like that we choose to be non-urgent and that means that we give anybody the help that needs it for any type of scenario.”

He says he’s not looking for a quick fix, but he hopes the meeting helps.

“I don’t expect everybody to come (to the meeting) with answers. It’s not going to be fixed overnight.

“The purpose of the March 3rd meeting would be to get everybody there, address what the problems are, take everybody’s concerns from the public, put that all together and then go back to the drawing board and say, ‘Look we know this is what’s wrong, what options do we have to fix this, how can the volunteer fire service and MFRs help us out,’ and then maybe have another public meeting maybe three to four weeks later and come back to the drawing board and tell people what was found out and how things are going to be addressed.

“The more people that show up, the better it will be. And hopefully we can get things addressed and make things better for all of Nova Scotia.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Emergency alert message sent to cell phones across NS when 9-1-1 went down

Emergency calls to 9-1-1 went answered Monday morning.

A failure occurred around 7:00am which prevented residents of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island from connecting with emergency services for roughly two hours.

The minister responsible for the Emergency Management Office John Lohr says to his knowledge this may be the first time a 9-1-1 system has ever gone down anywhere in Canada.

“Our goal is not to have a split second of disruption of the 9-1-1 services,” said Lohr. “That’s our goal and just to have two hours lost this morning is very, very shocking to us.”

Officials at the EMO centre sent a message out over the Nova Scotia emergency alert system at 8:08am.

Lohr says the time was needed to gather alternate telephone numbers and ensure those numbers were correct and working before providing them to the public.

At this point, the Minister says he is unaware of any situation where someone needed help and didn’t receive it during the two hours 9-1-1 was down.

At a press availability Monday afternoon, Minister Lohr explained the 9-1-1 system is operated separately from other cellular or landline systems and is built to a more robust and higher standard than those established by the CRTC for personal and business use.

There are multiple redundancies built into the system which are supposed to prevent any disruption to the service.

Several municipalities took it upon themselves, through their social media channels, to provide residents with a list of telephone numbers their residents could call to connect with local help.

Lohr says the provincial centre informed the municipal units about the breakdown and while the two levels of government work together during emergencies, the 9-1-1 system is a provincial responsibility, and the provincial team were focused on getting help out to all corners of Nova Scotia.

“The municipalities are incredibly important partners for us in their EMO plan and each municipality has their own EMO plan,” said Lohr. “This PCC is the provincial coordination centre, we would coordinate with the municipal emergency measures offices but as Paul Mason (Director of Nova Scotia’s Emergency Management Office) has said the 9-1-1 system is overarching so that would be our responsibility.”

The 9-1-1 system is operated by Bell across the three provinces and the company is still investigating the cause of the system failure.

Lohr says he expects they will provide an update once they determine the reason for the communications blackout.

**update Feb 1: CBC is reporting Bell provided them a statement indicating the outage was the result of a software upgrade

E-mail: edhalversonnews@gmail.com
Twitter: @edwardhalverson

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