Fire chief optimistic heading into 2020
By Nick Kuhl on January 4, 2020.
Tim Kalinowski
Lethbridge Herald
tkalinowski@lethbridgeherald.com
Lethbridge Fire and Emergency Services Chief Marc Rathwell hopes 2020
will see some easing of the strain on his members, and an increasing
sense of optimism in the community at large.
“I think you have to have a certain amount of optimism in this job
because I am here for my community,” he says. “I have to feel my
community is doing OK. I live here. I raised my kids here. All of my
extended family is from around here — this is home. So, yeah, I am
optimistic. Yes, our community has challenges. But we’re going to
work our way through those challenges and we’re going to come out the
other side and we’ll have a better system.”
While the previous year saw an increase in calls related to the
ongoing opioid crisis, and much the same is expected this year,
Rathwell sees it as his mission as chief to keep his people healthy so
they can continue to respond effectively.
“We want to make it healthier for them,” he confirms. “Whether
that’s mental health or physical health, we’re trying to make it
better for our crews. I know if we can take little bit of stress off
of them, they tend perform better for everyone in the community.
That’s my job to try to do that.”
These hopes aside, Rathwell says since taking over as Chief of Fire
and Emergency Services from retiring Chief Richard Hildebrandt last
June has been a challenging and rewarding experience.
“Taking over this job has been like drinking from a fire hose,” he
says with a laugh. “There is a lot of information you have to work
around. When I was deputy chief of operations, I ran the day-to-day
pieces of fire and EMS for the city, and I reported to the chief. My
job here now is to make sure all our groups are running smoothly, and
I have to make sure the funding piece is going well. I am making sure
our City folks are happy with that, and our department is getting
their needs met.”
To that end, one of Rathwell’s biggest challenges of 2020 will be
preparing the new Watermark fire hall in west Lethbridge to ensure it
gets fully staffed and resourced, and his crews are ready to put the
station into full operation once construction is complete in June of
2021.
Ten new recruits will be trained and added to the department this year
and the same number will be added in 2021 to provide the numbers
required to man the new fire station. This is the biggest class of
recruits ever added in Rathwell’s memory.
“We’re moving it forward, and we’re going to be there to support
our west side of the city,” he states. “We haven’t added any
additional resources in terms of fire to our community for a very long
time. So I am very excited about this, and I believe it’s really
going to help down the road with what we’re going to do in keeping
things safe and efficient for our community.”
Rathwell says the location of the new fire station, at this time about
two kilometres from the existing fire hall No. 2, is also a transitory
situation toward future plans for building another fire station
farther out to better serve both the firefighting and EMS needs of
west Lethbridge.
“The new station is right where it belongs,” he says. “The older
station on the westside actually needs to be moved farther north on
the westside. That’s in the design plan, but everything has to be
done in steps because they are expensive pieces when they go through.”
Rathwell also intends in 2020 to continue to advance the fire
service’s cancer mitigation program for the long-term health of his
members. Firefighters continue to die in North America at a much
higher rate than the general public from various cancers related to
their profession, and Rathwell has made his mission as chief to combat
this in any way he can.
“We’re doing everything we can here,” he says, “and we are
looking at any other initiatives we can, to try to reduce the cancer
risk to our firefighters. For me, to deal with the safety of all the
folks here as much as I can — that is one of my prime objectives.”
One of the biggest investments the department has made in that regard
is two “extractor” washers — one of which is currently housed at
the downtown fire station and the other which will eventually be
housed at the new Watermark station.
“We have brought in some special machines,” he confirms. “They
are basically fancy washing machines designed to get all the
particulates out of our gear after a fire event … We know that gear
that is dirty is holding all these carcinogens in them. And we know
all our new (building) construction materials we use nowadays have a
lot more chemicals in them that put more carcinogens out when they
burn.”
This is a big departure from firefighting tradition which tended to
see the wearing of fire-tarnished gear as a mark of veteran experience
in the firefighting service.
“I don’t want my guys looking dirty anymore in that traditional
‘been there, done that,’ sense; I want them to smell Downey
fresh,” jokes Rathwell. “I want them to have that clean gear all
the time so I know we have gotten those particulates out of their gear
so that they are safe.”
While there were many memorable moments to choose from in 2019 both
tragic and heartwarming, on a more cheerful note a personal highlight
for Rathwell was the great success of the goat-grazing program
implemented this past summer for the first time to help reduce the
fire risk to homes and public facilities along the coulee tops just
off of Scenic Drive South.
“The goats were fantastic,” he confirms. “That was a pilot
project through the Alberta government. We brought the goats out to
see how it would work for reducing some of the vegetation and issues
in the coulees where we can’t get into very well to cut the grass
back or the vegetation. I believe from the data we have looked at and
the process we went through that they did a phenomenal job. They were
able to clean out areas unbelievably well.”
Rathwell hopes to put some funding together somehow to continue the
program in coming years — noting that wildfire events are becoming
more common and preventing them is easier and less costly than
stopping them.
“We have seen those types of out-of-control fires,” he says. “We
have seen the Slave Lakes and the Fort McMurrays. I am not saying we
have the big forest issues like some of those other communities do,
but we do have wildfires and grassfires that do come through here.”
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