Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 15/99) - Corey Borolien is the last person you want to have to call on but if you do his actions can be the difference between life and death.

Borolien is a Yellowknife firefighter. Like all firefighters here, one of his duties is responding to ambulance calls, which make up about half of the 3,300 calls the fire department gets each year.

"When you start a shift you never know what's going to happen, so the job's never routine," said Borolien. "That's one of the reasons I got into this."

Two people work each ambulance, alternately driving and attending on each call. Ambulance workers are known as emergency medical technicians.

About half of the ambulance calls that come into the station are for medevacs - transporting patients between Stanton Regional Hospital and the airport. The rest include anything and everything, from kids with their arms stuck in pop machines to drug overdoses to multiple vehicle car crashes.

"You get the gamut," said Borolien. "Yellowknife has a fairly young population, so you don't get as many of the calls as you would for older people as you do in other places. We see a lot of calls related to drug and alcohol abuse compared to other places."

Unlike most southern cities, Yellowknife firefighters have to be able to deal with all emergency situations. Borolien said in the south you can work for a fire department for 10 years and never drive a pumper. Here versatility is the rule. Every firefighter is trained as a driver, EMT, firefighter and for search and rescue on land, air and water.

That versatility, and the professionalism of the Yellowknife department, is well-known in the Canadian emergency response community.

"The Yellowknife fire department is probably one of the best-trained and most progressive fire departments in western Canada," noted Borolien's partner for this shift, Ed Hardy. "That's not just something we say, it's recognized by others across Canada."

Firefighters work two 10-hour days, followed by two 14-hour nights, then have four days off. Plus, they're on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year in case of a major emergency.

As far as the image of firefighters whiling away the hours between calls playing ping pong at the fire hall, Borolien said that does not apply here.

"We're very much not the stereotypical fire department, where people are sitting around playing cards and watching TV waiting for something to happen."

Between calls, firefighters are busy doing building inspections, writing up reports, training, maintaining equipment and working on any one of the wide range of community programs the department runs.