The dry hydrant at Bangs Falls pictured in early September, one of the photos of the condition of dry hydrants, posted by the Greenfield and District Fire Department. (Greenfield and District Fire Department)

A new dry hydrant will be installed behind the North Queens Nursing Home but at almost three times the cost that Region of Queens councillors were expecting.

The dry hydrant behind the manor in Caledonia has been on a list of planned work for the past five or six years, council heard at their meeting last week.

Councillors had budgeted $40,000 this year to install three new dry hydrants. The two others were planned for Mary Lake and Westfield Road, also in Caledonia.

But the one approved by council last week near the nursing home is the only one that will be installed this year, and at a cost of $40,000. The others will be pushed to next year, according to Garrett Chetwynd, the region’s manager of public works.

Chetwynd told councillors that staff decided to contract out the work because public works staff were busy with other projects.

“The original request for pricing was posted to the provincial procurement site where we received no responses. When we received no submissions to that, it was submitted to, I believe, 12 local contractors. So that same RFP was sent to them and we only received one submission back.”

That was from C. Eugene Ingram Construction in Liverpool, who will install for $40,000 plus HST.

Dry hydrants are used where traditional hydrants aren’t available. They access water sources such as ponds, lakes or streams to help fight fires. The municipality maintains 51 dry hydrants around the county.

District 6 Coun. Stewart Jenkins said he was concerned that one hydrant will cost so much. He asked how much it’s historically cost to install a dry hydrant, but Chetwynd said he was familiar with only one being installed during his time with the region and he didn’t have those numbers.

“I’m not against dry hydrants coming in,” Jenkins said. “I am against one hydrant costing what three was expected to cost.”

He said he’d like to see council combine dry hydrant maintenance and installation into one larger tender to attract more bids.

“If we as a region working with the fire departments came up with a plan of putting in new hydrants or fixing old ones and came up with a group of hydrants to have fixed, then we would get a tender because it would suddenly become a higher dollar value,” Jenkins told his fellow councillors.

“And I think if we had, you know, $150,000 worth of work out there or $200,000, we’d do it once every two years and fix up a whole bunch of things, it would make it more acceptable to get better quality quotes from the people that do this sort of work in Queens County.”

Deputy Mayor Maddie Charlton said bundling the work into a higher-value tender makes sense, especially if municipal staff can’t do it.

“We do have to try to make this more competitive for sustainability moving forward.”

Councillors voted to direct staff to compile a list of new dry hydrants requested to date and those in need of repair to attract more competitive bids for tender. 

Some councillors were also concerned about delaying the work on the other two new hydrants to next year.

With the recent drought conditions in Nova Scotia, many of the water sources for the hydrants have literally dried up. The Greenfield and District Fire Department recently sounded the alarm about the condition of some of the hydrants in their area. According to a Sept. 1 Facebook post, the department has reported problems with dry hydrants to the region many times.

Councillors had set aside $110,820 in this year’s budget for maintenance and installation.

Jenkins said that while the dry hydrants provide handy access to water, the county’s volunteer fire departments have other ways of getting water to a fire scene.

“I know from experience with the fire departments that they do have other ways of getting water out of water sources than the dry hydrants. 
There’s portable pumps that are high volume. Many of the trucks have front intakes so they can pull into a site and pump water. So I don’t think it’s a fact that they’re not going to have water to that site. 
There’s other ways of doing it. And Greenfield (fire) department has had to lay out the other ways of doing it because half of their dry hydrants are very dry and the other ones are plugged up with mud.”

When asked, Chetwynd said he believes the work will likely begin in the next month, though he wasn’t sure exactly when or if the agreement dictates a timeline.

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.”

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Fire trucks at North Queens Fire Association headquarters. (Facebook)

Region of Queens councillors and staff have found a way to help the county’s fire departments with the increased costs of buying new equipment — and all without raising the tax rate.

Councillors are currently in budget deliberations, so the final budget has not been approved. But they headed off a request for an increase to the tax rate to help fire departments pay for new trucks.

Fire chiefs and the region agreed to a new funding schedule in February to replace fire and rescue trucks. The region increased its contribution to $425,000 for pumpers, tankers and aerial trucks from $275,000. That kicks in for the 2026/27 fiscal year.

But as councillors heard on Tuesday, new trucks keep getting more expensive. And higher interest rates mean that borrowing costs for fire departments have skyrocketed.

Fire chiefs made a presentation to council on Tuesday asking for an increase of one cent to the region’s overall tax rate. 

The residential property tax rate per $100 of assessment in districts 1 to 12 is at $1.07 and $1.92 in District 13.

Chris Wolfe, chief of the North Queens Fire Association, told council that interest rates for fire departments have risen to 8.2 per cent from 3.45 per cent in 2021. On a 10-year loan of $600,000, fire departments would have to pay $170,000 more over that period than they would have in 2021.

“Basically the $275,000 that we get now for truck replacement would be just gobbled up in interest charges and wouldn’t be going to the actual principal of buying the truck,” he said.

“The interest for that 10-year term is what’s making a big difference for us in the Queens County fire services in purchasing trucks. It’s taken a drastic jump over the last three or four years.”

Wolfe said the cost of trucks has also risen in the past three years. He said a truck builder in Lantz reported that the cost of a custom fire chassis has jumped by about $120,000 since May 2022. The truck builder told Wolfe that his overall supply costs have also gone up by three per cent. 

Three trucks are due to be replaced over the next two fiscal years, but at the region’s lower contribution of $275,000.

Wolfe said that a one-cent increase in the tax rate now would help the fire departments cope with the increased costs.

Councillors appeared to be prepared to grant the chiefs’ request.

CAO Cody Joudry, however, suggested that staff might be able to find another way to grant the chiefs’ request without adding to the tax rate. 

After a break, Joanne Veinotte, director of corporate services, said that councillors could do what they did last year to help maintain the tax rate.

During last year’s discussions, they budgeted $442,000 from the accumulated surplus to prevent a tax rate increase. Councillors are also eyeing an estimated $650,000 surplus from 2023/24. 

Veinotte said the region didn’t actually need any of that $442,000 because they saved money on staffing and delayed capital projects. She suggested they could do the same thing this year, by pulling $126,772 from reserve funds for fire services to balance the tax rate.

“The fire department has their increase of a penny but yet you still have your no increase in tax rate. And that is something I can literally do in two minutes. So if that’s what council feels comfortable with to get this budget done and put to bed, then I can certainly do that.”

Joudry clarified that if they record a surplus in 2024/25, then the region likely wouldn’t have to dip into the accumulated surplus to pay for the fire departments’ increased truck costs.

Councillors will get the final draft of the budget on Thursday. They hope to approve it at their council meeting on Tues., April 23 at 6 p.m.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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