THUNDER BAY — It's taking months longer than expected to complete an operational review of Thunder Bay Fire Rescue.
Last spring, the city hired a consultant to study every aspect of the fire service and develop a new strategic plan.
The results were supposed to be presented to city council by the end of August.
That's been delayed now until Dec. 9.
Mark Smith, general manager of the Development & Emergency Services Department, says city officials had a conference call with the consultant on Tuesday to review the status of the study.
Smith indicated there's more than one reason for the delay.
"Looking back, our timeline was too aggressive. I don't think it was realistic. Mostly, we just want to make sure we do a good job and get it right," he told Tbnewswatch in an interview.
"The amount of information we've been providing to the consultant has been massive...They've come back with more questions, so we're looking at different options, producing different mapping scenarios. It's just a lot of work, pretty much as simple as that."
A key objective the city identified when it launched the review was to identify ways to contain costs.
The study includes examining the locations of existing stations and projected call volumes to the year 2030.
The fire department's current annual budget is just under $30 million.
It operates out of eight stations and responds to about 9,000 incidents a year.
In 2018, only 278 of those incidents involved fire calls.
The great majority, 5100, were medical-related.
The remainder were other calls for service such as automatic alarms, car crashes, rescues and hazardous spill calls.
One of the areas the city has asked the consultant to examine is the department's role in medical 911 calls, including "their utility and effectiveness."
