Winnipeg Construction VIII

[CoryB]

The rural volunteer fire department process is fairly simple although not well understood inside the Perimeter.

For discussion purposes here let's go with the assumption the average distance from a residency to the fire hall in a rural area is 15 minutes. The moment your realize there is a fire and call the fire department for response they then call out to their volunteers. Those volunteers live approximately 15 minutes from the equipment which is then another 15 minutes from the fire. This means it would not be surprising for a fire to burn for 30 minutes before the first emergency responder arrives on scene. Add in factors like the fire burning for some time before you actual notice and make the call and that there is no fire hydrant requiring the crews to make repeated runs back to the station to refill the tanker and you start to understand why a house fire in rural Manitoba is usually a complete loss. And in case you are wondering, paramedic service in these areas is usually done on the same volunteer basis, but there add in your travel time to the nearest ER which is usually in a major city.

In terms of the ESP tunnel, if you read the link from Browaty's site there is a motion from ESP council that clearly calls the tunnel "two vehicular lanes". That basically confirms it is more than just access for emergency vehicles as they would only need a single lane of access as two way traffic would be unheard of in those situations.