Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - SRD staff will be meet with the Cortes Island Fire Fighting Association Board (CIFFA) and Regional Director Noba Anderson to discuss plans for a Superior Tanker Shuttle Service on Cortes Island.
If this program goes forward, a series of water tanks will be deployed across the island to be used in the same manner as fire hydrants in urban areas.
Firefighters in neighbouring communities like Salt Spring Island (2011), Powell River (2017) and Hornby Island (2018), found the Superior Tanker Shuttle Service enables them to deliver water suppression at the exact same standard as urban fire departments.
SRD staff has prepared a detailed report for Cortes which, according to Anderson, has a lot of useful information but also proposes things the Cortes Fire department is already doing.
At their September 8th meeting, the Electoral Areas Services Committee passed an unanimous recommendation that SRD staff meet with Anderson and the fire department.
However staff were not supportive when Anderson raised this topic at the October 6th meeting of the full board.
According to Tom Yates, corporate services manager at the SRD, staff has been meeting with the Cortes Fire Department since the beginning.
Chief Administrative officer David Leitch added that he did not understand what Anderson expected to get out of such a meeting.
“At this point, I can’t take further action on this report because so much of it is already either being implemented, or is planned to be implemented, or is not appealing to CIFFA,” said Anderson. “It seems much more effective to have all those parties at the table to discuss who might do what? And who is already doing what?”
Anderson would like to have this resolved before submitting Cortes Island figures to the next annual budget.
The SRD Board passed a resolution that the staff “report be referred to the Cortes Island Fire Fighting Association Board for a joint discussion between them, SRD staff and the Director for the area.”
Figure 4.2 Water Storage Tank at Cortes Island School - courtesy Superior Tanker Shutter Service Feasibility study (SRD)
