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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
When emergency crews respond to a fire, every second counts.

It takes 60 seconds from the time the dispatcher answers a call to when the information is relayed to the fire hall on the radio system.

It takes one minute and 20 seconds to one minute and 45 seconds for members of the Yellowknife fire department and emergency medical technicians to stop any training or other station duties and go to the emergency vehicles, don their suits, their breathing apparatus and their helmets, hop in the vehicles loaded up with equipment and hit the road.

"When the Yellowknife Fire Division gets a call, our average response time for a manned station (people are at the hall and not at another emergency scene) is four minutes and 50 seconds.

This response time starts with the receipt of the call at the fire hall until the crew is on scene," stated Nalini Naidoo, director of communications for the City of Yellowknife, in an e-mail.

On the City of Yellowknife website, statistics show that between 2009 and 2011, the average fastest response time was between May and August of 2011 at 4:48 while the longest average response time was 6:23 between September and December of 2009.

"At this time, the City of Yellowknife does not track response times to specific areas of the city for fires," said Naidoo.

The city's fire department is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week by a minimum of five and maximum of six career members, and two paid on-call members. Currently, the department is made up of 24 career firefighters and up to 30 paid on-call firefighters. On average, between 18 and 24 firefighters respond to a fire, according to Naidoo.

The department responds to every call, whether it's a false alarm or not. From 2009 to 2011, between 43 per cent and 66 per cent of all fire calls have been false alarms. But when there is a real fire, the damage is usually quite substantial when it comes to property damage.

According to statistics provided by the City of Yellowknife, property damage due to fires between September to December 2009 came in at $16,530. The most expensive month during those years was May 2010, with damage coming in at $1,885,000 - the majority of which was due to a top-storey fire at Coast Fraser Tower.

Fact file

Fire response by the numbers

Avg response times Property damage # of false alarms # of fire suppressions

Sept. to Dec. 2011 5:03 $262,300 79 54

May to Aug. 2011 4:48 $317,900 52 59

Jan. to April 2011 4:92 $254,000 68 49

Sept. to Dec. 2010 5:16 $738,400 72 54

May to Aug. 2010 4:53 $1,885,000 71 59

Jan. to April 2010 5:09 $92,188 85 43

Sept. to Dec. 2009 5:15 $16,530 75 38

May to Aug. 2009 6:11 $74,010 54 57

Jan. to April 2009 6:23 $764,555 71 38

Source: City of Yellowknife

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