Belleville Council is supporting a province-wide effort from fire departments, including its own, to reduce or prevent cancer in its fire personnel.
The group enacted a Fire Protection Grant by-law to approve a Transfer Payment Agreement and an increase of $41,200 in tool and equipment purchases in the 2025 Capital Budget to go toward purchase of a Bunker Gear Extractor and Equipment Decontamination Machine.
The Fire Protection Grant program was announced in the government’s 2024 budget.
The grant will assist fire departments in acquiring critical equipment such as this machine to enhance firefighter health and safety, and minor infrastructure at the local level.
Described by Belleville Fire Chief Dan Smith as ‘a great big industrial wash machine,’ the equipment decontamination machine will drastically reduce downtime of bunker gear, allowing staff to put it back in service quicker and have piece of mind that they are wearing PPE that is free of contaminants.
“First off, firefighters would come out of a contaminated area, and we have a gross decontamination that takes place,” Smith explained.
“That hosing down with the hoses right off of the trucks gets all the heavy debris off of them. They take that gear off, it’s bagged, return to the fire hall, and then it goes through a sequence of events of cleaning.”
Specialized detergents are used to deep clean the equipment, before its torn apart and put into one of two machines, either Station #1 in the urban area of Belleville or Station 3 in rural Belleville.
These washing machines will only hold three sets of bunker gear at a time.
The timing of this grant is pivotal, Smith explained, as it coincides with Cancer Prevention Month at Ontario Fire Services.
“There’s actually 19 cancers covered through presumptive legislation. That number will continue to grow as there’s more research and more science and unfortunately, it’s something that we face.”
“Over the last month, unfortunately, we’ve had three of our former members lost to cancer, to those presumptive legislation cancers and things like that,” Smith continued.
“It’s a very real time for them. We are supporting them in any way that we can.”
City approved and authorized a Transfer Payment Agreement for funding provided under the Fire Protection Grant.
