The year 2026 may seem a little like the distant future, but Salt Spring’s fire district is already looking past that expected completion date for the new fire hall –– toward improving coverage on what will by then be a shifted protection landscape on the island.
Specifically, trustees for the Salt Spring Island Fire Protection District (SSIFPD) are examining response times to fires, through the lens of the new Fire Hall No. 1 moving nearly two kilometres north from its current location.
A property is considered well-covered, and a homeowner’s insurance ratings are most helped, when situated within eight kilometres of a fire hall, according to Fire Chief Jamie Holmes –– not as the crow flies, but along connecting roadways. By this time next year, there will be overlapping coverage between Hall 1 and the satellite fire hall at Central –– Hall 3, at the intersections of Lower Ganges, Upper Ganges, Vesuvius Bay and North End roads.
That inefficiency suggested to trustees there might be advantages to moving Hall 3 north, to potentially cover areas like Southey Point that haven’t been within the eight-kilometre protection zone before.
“We think there’s more bang for the buck further north, when we start to count houses and response times,” said SSIFPD CAO Rodney Dieleman, who brought trustees a requested plan to start looking at whether that move would be feasible –– or desirable — at their Dec. 16 meeting.
It’s a long-term, forward-thinking notion; the ultimate goal would be an island-wide network with one main fire hall branching off to strategically located satellite halls, ensuring comprehensive coverage everywhere.
“What we really want to see is what are the spots where you could cover the island completely, with the fewest number of fire halls,” said Holmes. “And at that point you can determine if the population and densities support that. Or not.”
To that end, the district will be pursuing confidential expressions of interest for acquiring new land to the north, first reaching out directly to entities like provincial ministries and the Capital Regional District –– because, said Dieleman, “they may have land that we want more than they do.”
And meanwhile, SSIFPD staff are collaborating with a copywriter to draft and publish what is essentially a “land wanted” ad, which will run in local publications and online through the first weeks of January. The hope is to garner expressions of interest from landowners, and ideas from the public, which Dieleman will present to trustees during an in-camera meeting Jan. 20.
“These expressions don’t have to be ‘I’d like to sell you my land’,” said Dieleman. “It could be creative proposals; the board has flexibility at this point.”
Any proposals for potential new sites would be evaluated and presented to the board with analyses of whether each increased or decreased coverage, or met fire hall requirements such as water, sewer, storage and sound –– high bars, perhaps, but hopefully less complicated than choosing the site for Hall 1 necessarily became.
“These aren’t $15-million halls,” said Dieleman. “These are garages to store equipment, for people to respond from.”
A real estate appraiser took stock of Hall 3 earlier this month, Dieleman said, and the market value of the land and building should soon be available for trustees for their planning purposes.
“We’re not saying we’re selling the property,” said Dieleman. “We’re just accepting proposals so we can determine if it should be put up for sale, traded, swapped, donated or returned to the taxpayers.”
On the other end, the relocation of Salt Spring’s largest fire hall will lengthen response times to the south, at least before the eight-kilometre range of Hall 2 –– the Fulford satellite fire hall –– begins. Holmes and Dieleman said with areas such as the end of Beddis Road or the tops of Cranberry and Dukes roads losing some coverage, a second parcel of land for a mid-island hall between Ganges and Fulford might be a future project as well. It would be a smart, strategic place to store equipment, Holmes said, at least for a longer-term plan.
“But the centre of the island actually has pretty good coverage right now, even with the hall moving,” said Holmes. “Our two biggest [priorities] are Southey Point, and Beaver Point; if Beaver Point densifies, we would need to plan for a hall somewhere in that area.”
Notably, Holmes said, as the North Salt Spring Waterworks District’s moratorium on new connections eases, concerns about fire coverage for possible densification at Channel Ridge are, almost accidentally, alleviated.
“With Hall 1 moving north, it’s actually within eight kilometres of the Channel Ridge site,” said Holmes. “So we actually have coverage there, which is a bonus.”