City searches for back-up power solutions for fire halls

By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express

A collection of Oshawa’s fire halls remain without a dedicated backup power system – and following a decision by city council, that’s the way it’s going to stay for some time, even after an incident where a power outage may have lead to a slower response time.

The debate around generators in the city’s fire halls heated up this past summer when it was reported a back-up power system had been slashed from the budget of Fire Hall 6, the city’s newest hall, after all the bids to construct the building came in above the city’s $3.5-million budget.

Following that discussion, council agreed to have staff look into the possibilities of having back-up power systems installed in all of the city’s fire halls. Currently, only Fire Hall 1 (the home of the fire services dispatch and radio systems) and Fire Hall 5 have permanent back-up power systems installed. Last year, a portable generator was approved to be shared between halls 2, 3 and 4 in the case of an emergency.

A report was meant to come back in the fall of 2016 – however, council has approved what would appear to be a placeholder as staff continue to weigh their options moving forward. The motion notes staff are currently working with the Oshawa Power and Utilities Corporation “to consider small combined heat and power plants at the various fire halls,” as well as investigating other options with the caveat that “many new technologies in the industry are emerging, such as battery storage.”

A report is now due back some time in the first quarter of this year.

“Why is it taking so long? How can it take this long to come up with a solution for generators,” says Councillor Amy McQuaid-England, noting staff are looking beyond the mandate of the original request from council.

“At end of the day, the motion wasn’t to look for other things, the motion was how are we going to get portable generators to support our recreation centres and fire halls.”

However, Derrick Clark, the city’s interim fire chief, says he is confident city staff are taking the right approach.

“It’s been ongoing, we’re working on it, and I’m confident that through the commissioner and community services, we’re going to have it resolved and I think we’ll be fine,” he says.

Yet, things almost were not fine when an incident this past summer left one fire hall in the dark and unable to respond to a nearby incident.

The Oshawa Express has learned of a fire in June 2016 in the south end of Oshawa only a short distance from Fire Hall 2. However, when the call went out from the dispatcher, it wasn’t received by the nearby firefighters because the power was out at the time. Another truck was sent instead, arriving more than seven minutes later. According to information received by The Express, nobody was injured as a result of this incident.

When asked about the incident and the lack of response from Fire Hall 2, Clark says their dispatch was unable to confirm that the communication issue was due to the power being out.

“They can’t confirm 100 per cent,” he says. “They could have had an outage on our alerting system that corrected itself as well.”

Clark explains that technological issues will occasionally cause the dispatch system to go down for brief periods of time.

“It’s a constant thing that we’re always working with to narrow down and figure out,” he says, noting that in the south Oshawa incident, they’re “pretty sure” it was some kind of glitch.

“It just didn’t alert,” he explains. “When the crews didn’t respond in time, the communication does their back-up system, which is what they did and got them going.”

Looking at other municipalities, Clark says there is no real standard for back-up power systems in fire halls with some having them and some not.

“It’s all over the map right now, but we’re out in front of it and I think it will be resolved shortly.”

In the case of Fire Hall 6, the newest addition is still without back-up power, despite calls from the previous fire chief to install one using surplus funds from the construction.

In May 2016, it was noted that the project was carrying a $78,000 surplus. The estimated cost of a generator was pegged at anywhere between $60,000 and $80,000.

“We fully anticipated at that time that we would have the contingency amount left to put that in as the project got closer to an end,” former fire chief Steve Merginer said at the time.

However, according to Mark Robinson, the city’s director of facilities management, that was never completed. It’s unclear what the surplus funds were eventually used for.