2024 has been a very busy year for the Quesnel Volunteer Fire Department so far.
In fact, Fire Chief Ron Richert says they are on a record pace.
“Last year, 2023, from January to the end of June we seen 357 calls and for 2024, for the same time period, we were at 407 calls.”
Richert says this is part of a trend as they had 324 calls through June of 2022, 283 in 2021, and 214 in the first 6 months of 2020.
He says they are on pace for more than 800 calls for the year, which would surpass the almost 760 calls they had last year which was a record.
Richert says the numbers are up pretty much across the board.
“Burning complaints went from 48 last year to 67, commercial fire alarms went from 33 to 45, residential went from 33 to 41, mutual aids went from 67 to 76, structure fire commercial went from 1 to 4 this year, residential from 3 to 7, vehicle fires 3 to 15, small wild land fires we went up from 5 last year to 15 already this year, so that was a huge increase.”
Some of these calls are preventable, including burning complaints.
“We’re getting campfires in the downtown area along the Fraser River, Quesnel River and Baker Creek areas. We’re getting fires in non designated areas, you know on city property, so we’re definitely getting more.”
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