In a little over 100 years, Richmond has grown from a small township kept safe by a volunteer fire force, to a bustling metropolitan hub approaching nearly a quarter-million people.
One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is the area’s geographical importance.
“Steveston was one of the main ports of entry to B.C.,” says Coun. Bill McNulty, who wrote a book on this area’s colourful past, Richmond, British Columbia, An Illustrated History 1849 – 2015. “There was Victoria, New Westminster and Steveston. That’s how you got in here.”
The history of firefighters in Richmond has roots stretching back to the 1800s. Due to a Fraser River bustling with industry and fields full of working farms, a fire-fighting strategy was required from the get-go.
“The old city hall had buckets (of water) on the roof,” McNulty says.
In fact, the early neighbourhoods of the Township of Richmond were serviced by a volunteer “bucket brigade.”
“Always in the forefront were the volunteer firefighters,” says McNulty. “They were farmers, cannery workers, the mayor… people from all walks of life who cared about their community and put their name on the list, and when the gong went off, they went.”
The “gong,” or fire alarm, was literally a gong that sounded, and during the war years in the 1940s, an air raid siren.
Richmond was home to the Lower Mainland’s first air raid defence team, McNulty says, and Steveston had the first fire hall, the original Hall No. 1.
By the 1950s, a volunteer crew covered all of Richmond, including Steveston, Brighouse, Bridgeport, Burkeville and South Arm. There were about 20 to 25 members in each of about five locations, McNulty says, so approximately 100 firefighters, including Paul LeLoup, who signed on in 1954 as a volunteer on Sea Island. There was an appointed fire chief at the helm.
In 1957, LeLoup says a seniority system for firefighters was implemented. The fire chief decided no one would be “number one,” so they started at number 11. LeLoup was given number 19. This is a system that is still in place today.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Richmond began hiring additional members to meet the demand. LeLoup, who is now 84 years old, was hired on Sept. 1, 1958 as a full-time firefighter. He was promoted to lieutenant three years later and retired in 1988 as a district chief.
By the late 1960s, Richmond was a fully-paid force, although volunteers remained on duty into the 1970s.
LeLoup recalls a bit of labour strife in 1973, when firefighters went on strike over wages. They hadn’t had an increase in five years.
They set up picket lines and were walking the lines while city councillors were in the fire stations answering the phones.
LeLoup says the strike came to an end when there was a house fire. The fire chief drove the truck and all the members threw down their picket signs and drove their own cars to the fire.
The firefighters got their pay raise.
Today, all 217 firefighters in Richmond are full-time, paid members of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 1286.
And they are busy.
The City of Richmond, with a population of about 218,000 residents, is situated on an island encompassing an area of 129 square kilometres. It’s a diverse community, with people from 125 different ethnic backgrounds making up nearly 60 per cent of the city’s population. By 2021, it’s estimated that Richmond will be home to 225,000 people.
Situated in the middle of a transportation hub, serviced by a network of buses and SkyTrain (the Canada Line), Vancouver International Airport (which has its own fire service), and the Fraser Port (which sees high volumes of ship traffic), Richmond continues to have have unique and complex fire-rescue needs.
As well as protecting residents, members of Richmond Fire-Rescue (RFR) oversee the safety of more than 100,000 workers in 12,000 businesses, as well as large numbers of visitors to the airport, major events and tourist destinations.
“We’re the gateway to the world. Everything comes through Richmond,” McNulty says. “Put in a tunnel or a bridge, you still need to come through Richmond.”
Services are delivered from seven fire halls on a 24/7 basis. Firefighters routinely respond to fires and fire alarms, medical emergencies, motor vehicle incidents, hazardous material calls, water, confined space, crane and tower rescues, and public service calls.
Increasingly, in recent years, crews are responding to more fentanyl-related calls, as the deadly drug overdose crisis is not limited to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
“Fentanyl is a monster everywhere,” says firefighter Capt. Grant Wyenberg, a 23-year veteran.
As for blazes, on average, Richmond fire crews attend three fire calls a day. Particularly infuriating for members are the preventable ones.
Over the summer, the city had the dubious distinction of being the only municipality in North America to designate smoking-related blazes as the number-one cause of fires, with crews responding to more than two cigarette-started fires each day.
“These statistics are alarming,” says RFR spokesperson Capt. Brian MacLeod. “We aren’t aware of anywhere else in North America where smoking materials are attributed as the number-one cause of fires.”
Crews investigate every fire incident in Richmond as required by the B.C. Fire Services Act and report the cause and origin of the fire to the Office of the Fire Commissioner.
In addition to responding to these and other emergencies, the city’s firefighting force delivers several community education programs, including business and home safety, infant car seat checks, fire and carbon monoxide alarm information, CPR and emergency medical training, fire extinguisher know-how, and education around the dangers of discarding cigarettes.
In all, it’s a tall order – one that is not lost on city officials.
“We all have respect for them,” says Coun. Alexa Loo of the firefighters. “They are out serving our community day in and day out.”
When asked if more firefighters are needed for such a growing city, Loo says that eight more have recently been hired and she believes Richmond currently has “a good complement.”
New trucks and other emergency equipment have also recently been provided, she says.
Loo says going forward, it’s better to plan smarter, not necessarily bigger. For example, designing roads to offer easier access to trucks coming in and out of fire halls helps crews be more efficient.
She also notes that calculating resources on a per-capita basis can be misleading, as firefighting needs vary greatly from city to city, depending on factors such as density, geography (near water, more industrial, etc.), and infrastructure make-up, such as wood buildings versus cinderblock.
Loo also says better teamwork must be promoted on a community-wide scale in terms of education and prevention, with respect to things such as diligently installing smoke alarms and using common sense to prevent injuries.
“If we put a firefighter in every house, would that keep people safe?” she asks. “It’s the little things we can all do to take responsibility for safety every day.”
McNulty acknowledges that today’s firefighters have a lot more to tangle with than yesteryear’s barn fires.
They’re attending more medical calls and, along with paramedics and police, are increasingly acting as front-line social workers for a host of ills – everything from poverty, to drug addiction, to domestic violence.
“They do an astounding job. They go well and above the call of duty,”McNulty says. “It’s a magnanimous profession. I take my hat off to them all.”
McNulty adds a city study is currently underway to evaluate the department in terms of number of firefighters, deployment, placement of fire halls, protecting the harbour, airport strategy and more.
A consultant’s report will be tabled before Christmas, McNutlty says, and will be made public.
“I want us to have a very safe community,” he says, “and not just a safe community, but the perception of safety, which we now enjoy.”
