{"id":8427,"date":"2025-03-10T17:30:39","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T20:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/?p=8427"},"modified":"2025-03-10T17:30:50","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T20:30:50","slug":"ehs-addresses-911-call-concerns-of-north-queens-fire-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/2025\/03\/10\/ehs-addresses-911-call-concerns-of-north-queens-fire-department\/","title":{"rendered":"EHS addresses 911 call concerns of North Queens fire officials"},"content":{"rendered":"
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North Queens firefighters in a training exercise. (North Queens Fire Association Facebook page)<\/p><\/div>\n

The North Queens Fire Association in Caledonia will now be notified of more 911 calls in their community.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs of right now, if you call 911 and you say you want the fire department to respond, there will be no question. The fire department will be paged out,\u201d Chris Wolfe, chief of the North Queens department, told QCCR on Monday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last Monday, about 100 residents, firefighters and other first responders from as far away as Yarmouth met in Caledonia<\/a> to air their concerns about Nova Scotia\u2019s emergency communications system.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rural fire departments like North Queens said they weren\u2019t being paged about some medical emergencies in their community, even when residents specifically asked for their help.<\/span><\/p>\n

Volunteer fire departments can sign up to be a medical first responder agency and respond to various medical emergencies, depending on their level of training. That is vital in rural areas like Caledonia where the nearest ambulance depot is about an hour away.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 18 trained first responders in North Queens can attend almost any kind of call for help.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After a couple of high-profile incidents in the community left people waiting for an hour or more for medical help, Wolfe organized the public meeting with help from Queens MLA Kim Masland. She invited officials from Nova Scotia\u2019s Department of Health and Wellness, Emergency Health Services and Emergency Medical Care, the company that operates the province\u2019s ambulance and 911 services.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur local MLA Kim Masland\u2019s helped greatly with it,” Wolfe said. “The public showed support that night. It\u2019s just a bunch of various things that\u2019s come together to make people more aware of what\u2019s going on and there is an urgent need for something to change there. I couldn\u2019t be more happy with the way it\u2019s panned out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wolfe is also meeting with EHS officials on Tuesday in Halifax to discuss a potential pilot project with the North Queens department that could be used across the province.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to sit down and discuss some possibilities. There will probably be a new protocol put in place. It will start with our department and it will trickle down to different MFR agencies around the province.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wolfe said he believes hearing from the public pushed provincial officials to act.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOh definitely. I think they realize we\u2019re not going to let it lay to rest and it\u2019s something that needs to be addressed and fixed and they\u2019re on board and they\u2019re going to help us get there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wolfe said he will likely post an update on the department\u2019s Facebook page<\/a> Tuesday evening after the meeting in Halifax.<\/span><\/p>\n

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Listen to the audio version of this story below<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/northqueens911callsfolomar1025.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The North Queens Fire Association in Caledonia will now be notified of more 911 calls in their community. \u201cAs of right now, if you call 911 and you say you want the fire department to respond, there will be no question. The fire department will be paged out,\u201d Chris Wolfe, chief of the North Queens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[2899,358,2944,32,35,2937,2900,2952,2953,124,37,2954,29,2058,622,241,2945],"class_list":["post-8427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-news","category-news-posts","tag-2899","tag-caledonia","tag-chief-chris-wolfe","tag-chris-wolfe","tag-ehs","tag-emc","tag-emergency-health-services","tag-emergency-medical-care","tag-emergency-response","tag-firefighters","tag-medical-first-responders","tag-mfr","tag-north-queens","tag-north-queens-fire-association","tag-north-queens-fire-department","tag-nova-scotia","tag-public-meeting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8427"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8431,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8427\/revisions\/8431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}