Kamloops Fire Rescue’s Station 4 in Westsyde will be fully staffed with career firefighters as of August 1 to better respond to a growing number of calls for service.

Fire Chief Ken Uzeloc says it comes as the 10 new firefighters who were hired earlier this year completed their training at the end of June.

“We’ve added the new firefighters into our system and they’ve been out for a couple of weeks now,” Uzeloc said on NL Newsday. “They’re getting split up and they will rotate through all the stations in the first length of time to get experience on all of the apparatus.”

“They are ready to go and eager to be on calls, so what we’ve done is we will now balance adding two additional firefighters to the complement at Station 4 in Westsyde to have a full engine company of four people as we do at our other career stations.”

Uzeloc says the addition of the ten new career firefighters will mark the end of the hybrid model in Westsyde that saw two full-time firefighters work alongside a complement of paid on-call firefighters.

“[The career firefighters] could respond to all the calls but they couldn’t start to attack the fire with only two people,” Uzeloc said. “They would have to wait for the paid on-call complement or for other trucks to come from other career stations.”

More often than not, Uzeloc said firefighters would be sent to Westsyde from the closest available fire station – Station 2 in Brocklehurst, which is the city’s busiest – leading to gaps in service.

“Now with the new model August 1st, that [Westsyde] crew can now initiate offensive actions immediately on arrival,” he said, noting the change will ensure that KFR is able to effectively respond to an increasing number of calls in the Westsyde area.

“The paid-on calls have been providing service [in the Westsyde area] since before amalgamation,” Uzeloc added.

“They’ve been dedicated to the community and public safety for over 50 years out there so this was a tough decision to do but the amount of calls that they would be called out for now with a full crew out there would be even less.”

Of the seven fire stations in Kamloops, five – Sahali, Brocklehurst, Valleyview, Aberdeen, and now Westsyde – will be staffed with career firefighters, with two others – Rayleigh and Dallas – staffed with paid on-call firefighters.

Uzeloc says the paid on-call firefighters in Westsyde will still be able to serve, noting they’ve been opportunity to work out of Station 5 in Rayleigh.

“The need for paid on-call positions still exists within Kamloops and is a great benefit to the two remaining stations that rely on dedicated members,” he said. “We hope that Station 4 members will continue to serve Kamloops through Station 5 in Rayleigh.”

The additional 10 firefighters will cost Kamloops taxpayers $1 million this year, with another $100,000 from the gaming reserve being spent on renovations at Station 4 to house the additional staff.

Uzeloc also told Radio NL in November about plans to launch a 10-year strategic plan to determine KFR will need in order to be able to serve Kamloops into the future.

“The types of calls the fire department is responding to these days, the types of risk that exist, between industry demographics, age of the population,” he said, noting the review will also look at operational requirements, such as new equipment to fight fires in high-rise buildings and the location of any new fire stations.