The Chief of the Langham Fire Department says every year the number of calls they respond to increases. He estimates they will have had 140 calls by the end of the year.

The Langham Fire Department is recruiting for new volunteers, alongside many other community fire departments. Chief Bill McCombs says it’s quite a commitment – responding to fires, medical emergencies, accidents, ice and water rescues, grain entrapment situations and confined space situations. He estimates training to become a volunteer firefighter taking a year or two and between 200 and 400 hours, and he stresses that the time commitment for volunteers doesn’t just affect the individuals, it affects their families as well.

At the Langham Fire Department, similar to many community fire departments, there is a paid Fire Chief and volunteer paid on call firefighters. There are mutual aid agreements with neighbouring fire departments, so if needed, they can call on them for help. McCombs gives an example from a night last week which began with a fire in Borden. “I had a number of members in Borden. We had a medical call in the middle of all that. And, if we had anything major, I called Dalmeny to let them know that our guys were in Borden so they were prepared to back us up if there was a fire call or bigger incident in our area.” Having these agreements is especially important in bedroom communities to larger centres because often the volunteers work in the city and wouldn’t be able to respond quickly, so neighbouring fire departments are called to help with the response, through their mutual aid agreements.

The Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs cites a 2023 census, which says that at the time there were 126,000 firefighters across the country, of which 90,000 were volunteers. Many receive some form of pay on call, an honorarium, or are given some funding to cover expenses, but they don’t draw a living wage from firefighting.