The District of Logan Lake was designated as Canada’s first FireSmart community in 2013. (Photo via FireSmart BC)
The Chief of Kamloops Fire and Rescue says he’s hoping to have a new FireSmart coordinator hired by early April at the latest.
Ken Uzeloc says his department is working on the final details with the HR and finance department regarding the job description, telling Radio NL he expects that work to be complete in the near future.
“We’ve got some job descriptions from different communities that have a coordinator We also have one from the FireSmart program itself,” Uzeloc said.
“Once we are happy with what that job description is, then it’ll be evaluated to see whether it should be a unionized position or a management position and what pay scale will it fit into.”
Uzeloc says the person who is hired will be in charge of running the FireSmart program in Kamloops, instead of having several current employees take up aspects of it in addition to their regular duties.
“Successful FireSmart programs are when the communities themselves get engaged, so not just the city doing the city’s portion but getting the various communities across the city to actually buy in and start doing FireSmart initiatives,” Uzeloc told Radio NL last month. “It makes the whole city safer.”
He says the overall goal of the initiative will be to make Kamloops a FireSmart community.
“We know it is not going to happen in a year. You look at Logan Lake, it took them 16 years to reach that FireSmart community status, but every piece of work we do is focused on lowering the risk we have and that is going to help us in the long run,” Uzeloc said.
“We’ll develop what we want this person to do in Kamloops and get that posted and filled as soon as possible.”
It is not clear how much this new FireSmart Coordinator would cost, but it will be through reserves for the first year, with taxpayers picking up the costs after that.
“It would be mostly the staff costs for the person but obviously there would be some training requirements and we’d want to formalize as an actual program, so you’d need some budget for engagement with groups and communities,” Uzeloc said.
