Traffic Safety at Firehalls

Good afternoon, Council. My name is Scott Rose, and I'm here as the VP of Public Engagement for Vancouver Firefighters Local 8 Team. I'm here to support this motion and thank Councillor Kirby Young for bringing it forward, and thank all the councillors who have came out to our fire halls to see the conditions of them. Vancouver Fire Hall bay doors open right onto the sidewalks and bike lanes of busy streets. When the bells go, 90,000 pounds of apparatus comes out that door. On the other side, there's often a tourist who's never driven in the city of Vancouver, a kid on a scooter, or someone who's walking that street for the first time. Right now, there's not very much to tell them what exactly is about to happen. We're about to scream out onto the street to try and respond and help our fellow citizens. This city currently has minimal warning lights, often no signage, and very little cross-hatching that is inconsistent hall to hall. Burnaby and Richmond currently do this very well and have great models for making sure that people are able to see firefighters are coming. I can speak to this motion well from my personal experience as a firefighter and how hard it is to navigate these challenges, but I thought I'd say bring some words of my brothers and sisters. Pulling out of 17 Hall is a hazardous experience. Every time my crew gets out on the truck at Fire Hall 13, I fear a driver might try and drive up onto the ramp behind them. Someone is going to get killed. I've been at 6th Hall for three years now, and I would be hard-pressed to think of a shift in which one of our two trucks wasn't nearly hit returning to the hall. It is literally a daily occurrence. Firefighters do not want to be the emergency or the person causing an emergency. We have been lucky so far not to be the emergency and to not cause damage to our citizens. But I think with a little bit of investment, we can get to a place where that never potentially happens. The second piece is diesel exhaust. Diesel exhaust causes us cancer. It seeps into our living spaces and it lays as dust. Our synergenic exposure during our work hours causes us cancer. For years, our union has worked in great collaboration with the city to make sure that we minimize those effects, but we have not crossed the finish line. We're about 90% there. I think today with this motion, we can work together to make sure that there's a cancer-free fire service. And I thank all of you for your work on this over the years on several motions, including the PFAS free turnout year. I just want to finish by saying thank you all for listening to me, and I respect your time and presence. Thank you.

Could this be raised a bit for me before my time starts, please? I'd appreciate that.

Thank you for the file up. I just want to address the city of Vancouver at this meeting. My name is Nadine Chambers. I'm a 35-year resident of Vancouver. I'm here in person as a neighbor to Fire Hall 11 and 9 in support of this motion. I'm going to open with my question, which is how is the city planning to work to incorporate safer traffic designs as we anticipate the impact on emergency services? with three planned demolition and or construction sites at East Pender and Commercial. Let me just say, on February 2nd, I emailed these concerns, following up on a community meeting at Britannia on January 30th with the city planner, store, and the director of transportation, and this was cc'd to Karen Fry on February 2nd. In the 90s, I remember noticing multiple fire sirens at work. I didn't know they were heading to my apartment building for alarm fire. It was demolished that night. I worked on Burnaby Mountain at the height of the university development, and the fire hall arrived a decade later. Who forgot the fire hall? As a 17-year resident off Commercial and Hastings, Fire Hall 11 is a new neighbor. I watched the median being cut to accommodate their ability to go west on Hastings last summer. Today, read point four of this motion. Please move to slide two. The other side of the crosshatch for traffic heading west... to commercial is non-existent. From my observation, the number one choice of ambulance and fire is to travel south on commercial. I have no issue with that. Victoria is traffic calm due to two schools and two parks. Two, the free parking on Hastings... which is on the left picture there, it's not a very good picture, I didn't want to get killed while trying to take pictures, takes up a lane for three quarters of the block in front of the median cutout for most of the day. The westbound number 14 and 16 stop has been moved to the tip of that northeast block in the last few months as if Fire Hall 11 is not there. The westbound R5 drivers probably hope and pray for space before crossing commercial to the stop on the other side. Hastings East-West. I was filming watching yesterday non-bus traffic heading west at 3 p.m. It's worse at rush hour. The traffic pause time limit can mean within 10 to 15 seconds, commercial and Hastings intersection is blocked right up to the median exit for truck 11. All lanes, including turning. Best videos I have are listed on my site. Never mind. The fire hall and its resident community need controls at the top of the hill at Hastings and Victoria, as well as at Commercial and Hastings. The trucks racing off the Port of Vancouver to approach Hastings and Commercial with little time to pump their brakes. It's also a slope. Nighttime, the intersection is a hazard. Please sift in the next slide. I'm out of time. I took these pictures February 2nd. Basically, when the trucks return to the hall, the crew members jump out to walk the truck in as it backs in. There's no traffic light controls for them, which means cars start slipping by. Fire Hall 11 needs lights like Burnaby Fire Hall 5. And that Yamaha sign there can be repurposed. I get it. It's very close. My apologies. The raised median at the two block, in the next slide, please. The raised median within a two block range for buses and drivers coming off Hastings makes a hell of a bottleneck. We have kids from Britannia coming down to get a seat on the 20. We've got indigenous co-ops and elders at 3 p.m. It's pretty wild.

Yeah, and we'll leave it at that. Thank you for your time.

All right, so this is the end of our speakers list.