Al0 Terrace Review —

Wednesday, October 17, 1990

Firefighting by
the bucket-full

The "Bucket Brigade" in the
McDonald’s parking lot Saturday
afternoon offered some laughs as
well an interesting end to’ Fire
Safety Week in the Terrace area.

Three four-man teams entered the
competition: there was a Mc-
Donatd’s crew and one from each
of the local fire departments. The
idea in this event was 1o carry
water in canvas pails about 50 feet
and then toss the contents onto a
makeshift roof constructed es-
pecially for the event. An eaves-
trough caught most of the water
that landed on the roof and it then
drained into a 45-gallon drum to
be measured.

The McDonald’s team went first
and fooked impressive. In their
allotted five minutes:the barrel was
about 2/3 full and the water level

. was measured at 21.5 inches.
Thornhill firefighters came next,
though, and their experience over
the younger McDonald’s crew

Shone through. The clock was

stopped at 3:24 when the barrel.

overflowed. This offered a chal-
lenge for Terrace firefighters, a
challenge it appeared they might
not meet when their strategy of
running the 50 feet slowed to a
wheezing walk. But they did it.
They overflowed the barrel in a
time of only 3:01... and a bit.
There was no mention of the fact
that Terrace firefighters built the
roof, which they apparently used it
at one practice, supplied the barrel,
and the stop watch was under the
total control of Terrace assistant
fire chief Per Halvorsen. In dis-
playing a sense of sportsmanship,
both Terrace and Thornhill fire-
fighters offered the McDonald’s
crew another try. This was
declined, however. The team was
cold, hungry and-wet, and appa-
rently opted for a hamburger

instead.

Kitimat man dies in
three-vehicle crash

Albert Rigoni, 19, of Kitimat
died in a three-vehicle motor
vehicle accident 17 kilometres
north of Kitimat at about 2:30 p.m.
last Saturday afternoon. Kitimat
RCMP say Rigoni was seriously
injured in the accident and trans-
ported by ambulance to Kitimat

General Hospital, but was pro-
nounced dead a short time later.
No further details were released as
to the number of injuries or types
of vehicles involved. A Kitimat
RCMP spokesman says that an
investigation into the cause of the
accident is continuing.

It was a cold, damp end to Fire Safety Week, but Terrace and Thornhill firefighters and a
crew from McDonald’s proved they could get the job done without high tech equipment at

pa

a bucket brigade competition held in the McDonald’s parking lot last Saturday afternoon. a:

ae: cor

911 a costly proposition

around $15 to $16 per year for phone number and address would

One of the recommendations of
the coroner’s jury who listened to
the evidence surrounding — the
drowning death of six-year-old
Joey Parsons in Terrace last spring
was to implement a 911 emer-
gency number in the Terrace area.
A911 number offers access to all
emergency services — ambulance,
fire and police — and when a call
is received in a central 911 dis-
patch office all appropriate emer-
gency services are on theif way
immediately. The jury reasoned
that this type of dispatch might
have eliminated some of the con-
fusion that appeared to surround
the efforts to rescue Parsons.

To date there has been no move

in our area to put a 911 service
into effect, but the Regional Dis-
trict of Fraser-Fort George is going
to referendum on November 17 for
exactly this kind of service. Fraser-
Fort George regional district ad-
ministrator David Wilson says the
system is expensive, but affordable
if done on a regional basis,

The Fraser-Fort George regional
district has about 90,000 residents
living in an area of around 52,000

‘square miles. The cost of im-
plementing the 911 service would
be about $2.4 million, of which
one-third, or $800,000, would be
covered ‘by a lottery grant. To
operated the system, Wilson says,
would cost another $1.5 million to
$1.75 million annually. This repre-
sents a sizeable investment, but
‘according to Wilson it will only
cost the average home owner

both operational costs and debt
retirement,
If a similar system were to be

installed in the Regional District of -

Kitimat-Stikine, which has a popu-
lation of about 40,000 residents, it
might cost the average resident
around $35 per year. An exact
number, of course, would have to
be worked out by the appropriate
experts, but this would seem to be
a reasonable estimate of the per
capita cost of a system here.

If the Fraser-Fort George referen-
dum is passed, Wilson says this is
what taxpayers will get for their
money: anyone in an emergency
situation, whether they’re in Prince
George, Mackenzie, Hixon or
Clucluz Lake, would simply dial
911. An operator in the central
dispatch office in Prince George
would answer the call, and even if
the caller was unable to speak the
operator would already know the
identity of the caller: the name,

be displayed on a computer screen.

A caller who is able to speak he
would tell the dispatcher which
emergency services were required.
If it was an ambulance, the call
would be relayed directly io the
provincial ambulance dispatch
centre for northern B.C, in Kam-
loops. If the fire department was
required, the appropriate one of 16
regional fire departments would be
notified. And if the police were
required the caller would be con-
nected to the central RCMP dis-
patch centre in Prince George, who
would notify the appropriate de-
tachment.

To make the system work, says
Wilson, will mean adding staff to
the fire and police departments in
Prince George, but at the same

time would simplify the mainte-

nance of several 24-hour emer-
gency services in smaller com-
munities.

NIRVANA

LAUREL GREGG

MODERN METAPHYSICS

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