in training 40firefighters spreads staff thin in HRM, union says

CITYnews halifax / By Natasha O’Neill

The union for Halifax’s firefighters says that several stations in the region have no staff on duty because the teams are in training on Thursday.

Brendan Meagher, President of the Halifax Professional Fire Fighter Union, told CityNews in an interview that there are 10 fire trucks across the municipality from Sheet Harbour to Tantallon out of service.

There are only three stations across Halifax Regional Municipality that have more than one truck per station, meaning the majority of the 10 trucks out of service on May 22 are the only apparatus at the station.

“We have one station with three apparatus, an engine, the aerial and attack unit, that’s Highfield Park,” Meagher said. “All three of those apparatuses are involved with a training scenario for hazardous materials response today.”

However, in case of an emergency, stations nearby in the city can respond, but the union says that would be “depleting the resources allocated for each community,” increasing response times for other situations if they were to happen.

In Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency’s strategic plan, one of its goals reads that it will “respond to our community needs in emergency or non-emergency situations with diligence.”

It continues to say, “We will strive for a response that consistently meets the standards our council and organization mandates with attention to detail and continuous improvement.”

Bedford has two engines (only one truck is in training); the rest, including Upper Sackville, Cowie Hill, Clayton Park, North End, Woodside and Fall River, have only one truck, which are all out of service.

???? Halifax Down 10 Fire Trucks ????

Today, 10 fire trucks are out of service or tied up in mandatory training—with no professional fire fighter backfill in place.

Unavailable units:
4E, 6E, 8 Tact, 11T, 45E, 15E, 5Q, 12E, 12A, 12 Tact

Halifax Professional Fire Fighters believe… pic.twitter.com/efBIfW7jgs

— Halifax Professional Fire Fighters (@hfxfirefighters) May 22, 2025

“So between the hazardous materials training and medical first responder recertification, we have 40 firefighters of 101 minimum (at training),” Meagher said.

This means roughly a third of firefighters are not on duty on May 22. The union is not advocating against training, Meagher said, they understand the need and want teams to work together in scenarios to better prepare them.

He noted that the union negotiated with the city to have “straight overtime” so that district chiefs, who control how stations are covered, could backfill teams without depleting response times.

“What our managers have chosen to do is take the savings and not backfill these stations with their members. We’ve asked them for years now to do this, and they keep rolling the dice,” Meagher said.

In the case of an emergency, district chiefs would pull crews from training, but that could “cause a great delay,” Meagher believes. The goal is for crews to respond with 14 firefighters in 11 minutes about 90 per cent of the time, Meagher said, this is happening only about 50 per cent of the time.

Normally, several teams train together, but Meagher said 10 trucks out of service is not common.

“The main concern is not even necessarily that 10 stations are doing training all together. It’s the fact that there is no backfilling at those stations to cover for those people,” he said. “We think it can be done much more responsibly…We think our employer should be calling in off-duty personnel to staff trucks in these stations that are engaged in the training.”

CityNews Halifax reached out to the District Chiefs on duty, but did not hear back before publication.