Concerns about fire services
Dear Editor,
The City of Oshawa held an open house on Jan. 21, 2020 for the public to give their input on fire services in Oshawa.
We asked several city councillors if they were letting the residents in their wards know about the open house. A few said yes although most felt it was advertised well enough. However, it was not since very few of the residents of Oshawa showed up.
The only councillors who attended that evening were Brian Nicholson, Jane Hurst, John Gray and Rosemary McConkey. The mayor was not in attendance.
The best part of the night was the large number of firefighters who came to show their support. There were display boards all around the room for people to read and one of them showed fire call responses data from all the stations.
Station 1 at 199 Adelaide St. W. lost one of its two fire trucks to the city’s newest built station in Oshawa’s north end. Now the truck from station 1 only arrives in the required time 53 per cent of the time.
The people of Oshawa need to know that in case of a fire in the area of Station 1, the truck may not make in the recommended amount of time.
The mayor and several councillors keep postponing the hiring of new firefighters and adding a truck back to Station 1, the busiest station in Oshawa.
What side are you on? What side are your family, pets and your home on? We need to contact our city councillors, particularly those who have voted against hiring more firefighters in the past.
We need to hire more firefighters before it’s too late and another young mother dies, before another child dies.
We created a Facebook page to inform the public called “Fire Station 1 Truck Return”
Below were the objectives for the open house:
– Education and engagement for the residents of Oshawa
– Education objective: to present the preliminary analysis of the Community Risk Assessment and Fire Master Plan.
– Engagement objective: to invite the Oshawa community to share their experience with Oshawa Fire Services through feedback.
Darlin Bonchek