Why Are We Hiring More Police & Firemen?

 The City has recently added 40 more full time firefighters and 15 more RCMP members.

How do we justify the added expense when we consider two recent news stories.

Nanaimo News Now story HERE




News Bulletin article HERE

Crunching the numbers

The RCMP calls for service for 2024 at 42,743 were 5,377 fewer calls than they fielded in 2021 when the total was 48,120.

Nanaimo firefighters report a sharp decrease in the number of overdose calls they attended in 2024 at 1150 compared to 1822 in 2023, which was up 165% from the 2022 total of 1104.

For further comparison, the total incidents the Nanaimo Fire Dept. recorded were as follows:

Structure Fire 2024 = 172 vs 2018 = 161  = 11 more calls

Motor Vehicle 2024 = 695 vs 2018 = 664  = 31 more calls

Fire Other       2024 = 567 vs 2018 = 546   = 21 more calls

Medical: 2024 = 7853 vs 2018 =  7507 = 346 more calls

40 more Firefighters to Handle 1 more daily call?

The Fire Department responded to a total of 409 more incidents in 2024 when compared with 2018. This means the Fire Department responded on average to 1.1 more calls per day when comparing 2018 and 2024.

This council has approved the addition of 40 more firefighters during this same period of time. It is hard to imagine it really takes 40 more firefighters to handle 1 more call per day.




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