Fire & EMS shrink call area for 2nd half of 2023 to serve Niverville residents only

Niverville Fire and EMS responded to 30 calls last month. 16 were fire/rescue calls and 14 were EMS. 

Fire Chief Keith Bueckert says 30 calls a month for their fire department is about average these days.  

“That’s right in line with what we've had for the first quarter of the year and April was a nice break for our guys, so I wouldn't say that this is anything. It just is becoming the new norm for us and Niverville, with these types of call numbers.” 

Bueckert says even with the snowy April, their call numbers dropped because of a decision made to align their Fire Responders with Niverville Fire and thus, the volunteers will only be servicing Niverville residents.  

“We shrunk our area to just cover the town in Niverville, just due to the sheer numbers that we were getting. We now just cover Niverville for both services.” 

Bueckert gives the reason they needed to shrink their area of service.  

“Because of our volunteers, for sure, and basically the taxpayers of Niverville were the ones that are paying for the First Responder program. So, it was a bit of a hard decision for us, but we decided for our volunteers and that it was time to just service the area that basically our ratepayers are from.” 

Bueckert says they are still going to help other communities in emergency situations. 

“We have agreements with our Eastman mutual aid and then also with the RM of Hanover should they need us or vice versa we're able to utilize their services as well.” 

He notes for the first five months of the year they had 136 calls, which he says is right on par with what they’ve had in previous years.  

“The trend that we've been seeing over the last number of years, prior to the pandemic and then during the pandemic, our numbers changed with us being able to respond to not all the medical calls for a period and then once we went back to responding to everything again, our numbers are right back and even greater, they seem to be rising every year quite substantially so.” 

In 2021 Niverville Fire and EMS attended 289, in 2022 they were at 339 emergencies 

“And now in 2023, we're sort of maintaining the same numbers that we were seeing last year at this time.” 

Bueckert notes everyone is invited to the Niverville Fire and EMS pancake breakfast this coming Saturday morning taking place on the Niverville Credit Union parking lot.