Fire department able to purchase much needed equipment

Shannon LeClair 

Times Reporter

 

Thanks to a generous donation from a local developer and businessman, the Strathmore Fire Department, SFD, is now equipped as one of the top water search and recovery teams in the area. 

Ken Struss, who is with Cancorp and an owner of the Wildflower Ranch development, spent some time on the boat with SFD members recently and saw a way he could help them.

“What I said was, I would donate $10,000 and use it for equipment for the fire hall,” said Struss.

“They had a couple of emergencies lately and they were lacking some equipment, so I inquired about what some of the equipment was. It’s a sonar system and a radio system because the boat is so loud you can’t communicate.”

There were 10 calls last year to SFD for a water rescue and/or recovery, and members of the department say they are already over 10 this year. 

With the addition of this equipment the SFD will be one of the front line crews in the area. Most of the surrounding fire departments, if not all, do not have side sonar capabilities as far as they know. 

“It’s super advantageous because, at present, most of the radio reception drops out at the river,” said Ryan Parkins, with the SFD.

“With this new system not only will it be noise cancelling so we can hear other guys on the intercom, but we’ll actually be able to communicate with any dispatch that’s talking to us at the time, whether it’ll be Calgary or Strathmore. It will help us coordinate efforts better and therefore make our work more efficient and safe.”

With the new sonar equipment the SFD will have a better chance of having more rescues than recoveries. SFD firefighter and president of the Strathmore Fire Fighters Association, Jamie LaChance, said it was like having no eyes and looking in the dark, to suddenly having a spotlight on everything. 

“Before what we had was just a system that allowed us to see just the bottom, directly what was underneath the boat out to maybe five feet on either side of the boat,” said LaChance.

“The side sonar now creates an image almost 180 degrees to the boat and 150 feet of the centre each side, so your scope of view is massive, it just became tremendous.”

Calgary, Brooks and now Strathmore are the only three communities in the area which have the side sonar equipment.