Red Deer County is taking control of the Elnora Fire Department to ease the administrative burden on volunteers.
Previously, the county contracted Elnora’s fire department to provide coverage in the surrounding fire district. The county owned three of four trucks and provided operating funding.
“Basically, what we’re doing is flipping that agreement,” said Dave Brand, county director of community and protective services. Elnora will now contract the county to provide fire service.
The move came at the request of Elnora’s village council and reflects the fact most calls volunteers respond to are in the county. From 2015 to 2017, Elnora volunteers responded to 111 county calls and only 38 within the village.
“Really, the reasoning behind it is to allow that department to continue to be sustainable.
“It’s got a very strong volunteer membership, which is great, but the county has a little more administrative horsepower,” said Brand.
Elnora had to send all of its reports into the county anyway, he said. “This way, we just turn it around. We put it into where we have staff to handle it.”
“We do that for a bunch of our fire districts,” he said, citing Delburne, Spruce View and Bowden.
“For those areas, it’s all being handled centrally, which then allows them to focus on what they do well out there, which is responding to calls.”
The department also has a Red Deer district, and contracts out fire protection to Sylvan Lake and Innisfail to cover the surrounding county areas.