Heart on Fire!

Not Johnny Cash - but Shirley Bond, BC Jobs Minister, announcing recently that the BC Government - by amending the Workmen's Compensation Act - has again made heart-disease/attacks/death of fire-fighters a job-related issue, to be recognized by WorkSafeBC and forthwith compensated without the inconvenient need to prove the condition actually being job-related. This in BC only.
Heart-conditions will now join 10 other already as job-related accepted diseases, including leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, bladder and brain-cancer.

The heart. According to The Canadian Press*: Mike Rispin, a 22-year firefighting veteran from Vancouver Island said he has seen colleagues collapse from heat exhaustion, and he knows of at least one Nanaimo firefighter who suffered a heart attack and died fighting a fire.
Within 22 years knows of at least one heart-attack resulting in death - what does at least mean here?

Back to Bond: We know that the risks you face every single day include carbon monoxide, thousands of chemicals, airborne particulates, noise and physical stress. We know that you work in a hazardous workplace. You should not have to go through the anxiety of having to prove that you've been impacted with heart injury or a heart attack.
Her list really covers all: from soldier to miner, mill/factory-worker even basic urbanite.
Soldiers are frequently killed by directly work-related circumstances - after having gone through all the above - or kill themselves because they don't have a fat-cat union supporting them - if they sort-of survive their lines of fire.

A Nelson fire-fighter - in conversation with me - does not refer to any of the listed conditions/contributors. Joining Mike Rispin in saying it's the stress on the heart - the sudden adrenaline rush. Like major coffee-infusions?

   

Yet - according to The Globe and Mail**: Thanks to modern safety-standards there are few fires left to fight. These days, most fire department calls are medical. To prove that they are still needed, fire departments have been adding defibrillators and Jaws of Life, frantically expanding their repertoires to respond to even minor non-fire emergencies. Still, there's an awful lot of what we shall euphemistically call "down time", which firemen fill by preparing meals, sleeping, watching television, polishing trucks and rewinding hoses.
Not to forget pumping iron, oiling-up and posing for calendars.

Yet in most of my research - including Minister Bond - the same fire-fighters fight fires every single day all day long - like all the time! How many fires has the Nelson Fire Department fought in 2013? This year?

So they are looking for support from Council against a pending rule-change within the BC Emergency Health Services (BCEHS) Resource Allocation Plan which would - as I understand this - reduce certain ambulance services of First Responders by 35%. It's a no-brainer that Council should do this - but the fighters communicate poorly to Council, clearly not having proactively communicated with ambulance handlers and 911 at the cop-shop either. Spreading blame while looking for sympathy - kindly willing to step in here.
But Chief Grypma - not present and with much more what's-what - states at the end of his written reasons to Council against reductions: We are staffed and deployed for fires - everything else we do is a bonus and extra value. Extra as in extra money - like heart-attacks! While rural-BC fires are fought by volunteers - not even a little extra for them!

And back to The Globe and Mail: Municipalities do not love firefighters. Across Canada, towns and cities are getting hosed by sky-rocketing costs of their fire departments. Thanks to arbitration settlements, your firefighters are the best paid (and possibly the most underworked) guys in town. Firefighters have been getting raises that are twice as high what other public sector workers have been getting, at a time when municipalities are strapped for funds, and raises are just a memory for most of us.

Nelson is no exception with salary-demands and demands for just about anything else under the sun - coming from entitlement; with the mayor - according to The Nelson Daily*** - voicing his frustration openly - wanting to change (the) process for bargaining with police and fire unions.
Which are not bargaining at all!

Neither are they a bargain: the median salary of a fire-fighter in Canada being $65.000 per year, but odd working-hours add overtime pay which can raise income to $100.000.

Nelson - where firefighting is a family-affair - recently advertises for auxiliary fire-fighters. According to the Nelson Star****: Ideally the composite fire department would have 21 auxiliary members to assist its 12 career fire-fighters. "We provide all the training they need to be certified as a Class 1 Fire-Fighter," Grypma said. Gaining that accreditation through a school would cost around $7000. Additionally, auxiliary fire fighters are provided with uniforms and turnout gear valued at $2500 and paid $14 per hour for the time they spend training or responding to calls.
Connect the dots! They should be happy to get paid anything at all and not having to fight fires in the nude - although they probably would if it meant for sure getting signed-on for the big money down the line.

Even with all those diseases and possibly death looming - job-openings are rare: it's an insider's game and major tsk-tsk. To become part of what Maclean's Magazine***** in this context refers to as the new upper class.

More Shirley Bond - a frequent fire-watcher: One of the things that has been ingrained in my memory is in circumstances where other people run out, you run in. That makes an enormous difference. 





*
BC Firefighters can now claim heart disease as job-related stress
The Canadian Press - 10 Mar, 2014
Dirk Meissner

**
A nation of $100.000 firefighters
The Globe and Mail - 8 Aug, 2013
Margaret Wente

***
Nelson wants to change process for bargaining with police and fire unions
The Nelson Daily - 4 Jul, 2013
Bill Metcalfe

****
Nelson Fire Rescue recruiting auxiliary fire fighters
Nelson Star - 13 Oct, 2013

*****
The Upper Class
Maclean's Magazine - 22 Apr, 2013
Nancy MacDonald