2008 Fire Master Plan - City of St. Catharines

FIRERESCUE2.5 Tr a n s p o r tat i o nThe City of St. Catharines is divided by several transportation arteries. They are the Q.E.W. and 406 highways, theC.N.R. rail lines and the Welland Canal which is part of the St. Lawrence Seaway system. All of these are venues forthe transportation of large amounts of material including dangerous and hazardous materials on a 24 hr basis. Thefollowing is an overview of some the risks that St Catharines can be faced with in the event of an incident.The Welland Canal starts in Lake Ontario and proceeds on a southerly direction through St Catharines to end in PortColborne and Lake Erie. Incidents have occurred in the past whereby there have been collisions (WINDOC collidingwith a bridge in Port Robinson) within the seaway between ships and bridges in particular. In 2006 from March toAugust 13 the canal carried 1430 ships, 786 of them inland ships and 644 ocean ships.All of these cargo ships were carrying everything from raw materials to chemicals to fuels. As our firefighters conductlimited shipboard firefighting, the hazards and the problems that we as a Fire Service can face are enormous.The two major highways, the Q.E.W. and the 406, carry the majority of the vehicular traffic especially commercialtransport vehicles through the city boundaries and carrying a vast assortment of products.In contacting the C.N.R. we were informed that the corridor that comes through St. Catharines handles 16 to 30trains a day (upwards of 50 cars per trip) primarily of freight; however this does include two passenger trains aday between Niagara and Toronto. The other trains are mixed manifest freight trains that carry everything fromfinished automobiles, to steel, lumber, petrochemicals, grain, paper plastic pellets etc. and a number of other industrialchemicals needed in the manufacture of a host of finished products. The risk to this Municipality increases with thenumber of railroad crossings that we have (8 crossings and 4 bridges). A detailed compilation of these regulatedcommodities will be made available to us as needed. The CNR does not have any storage buildings or warehouses inour area.2.6 Org a n iz at i o n a l Ri sk sIn the next 3-5 years St Catharines Fire Services will be facing an influx of retirements of potentially over 30firefighters/fire officers who will be retiring and taking away a vast amount of experience. Nineteen officers whorepresent almost one half of the officer ranks will be retiring. The amount of experience that will be lost from ourofficers retiring will leave a huge void within the organization. Given the push by the Ministry of Labour to ensurewe are following proper health and safety procedures including having trained and qualified supervisors there is avery important need for a strong officer development program. As well the length of time it takes to go through thehiring process in addition to conducting recruit training will be a major challenge for the training division. Training thisamount of staff will be virtually impossible without added resources in both the Training and Suppression divisions.16ST. CATHARINES, FIRE SERVICES