A donation from Timmins is helping Mattagami First Nation’s efforts to revamp its volunteer fire department.
Earlier this year, Timmins council approved donating 12 self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) to the Mattagami First Nation volunteer fire department.
Members of the community were in Timmins to express thanks to the department yesterday.
Mattagami First Nation Chief Chad Boissoneau gave Timmins Fire Chief Normand Beauchamp and Chief Training Officer Berny Stansa a handmade drum. A letter of thanks and other gifts were also exchanged.
In 2016, Timmins replaced its SCBA inventory, with the old units being stored at the Cedar Street fire hall since.
The new partnership was born after Mattagami First Nation Fire Chief Wilbert Wesley stopped by the Timmins station.
“Wilbert came to see me on several occasions and we were talking about training and some deficiencies in his department and some of the challenges he had joining that brigade,” said Stansa.
“They’re a small brigade, there’s no use reinventing wheels we have stuff that we can offer them, we have training stuff that we’ve made up ourselves, there’s no reason we can’t give it to them.”
The donation of the equipment to the community near Gogama is helping its efforts to upgrade the fire department.
It started last year, when Wesley was hired to help create more structure for the volunteers.
Boissoneau explained that Wesley is also getting the volunteers “trained in specific areas needed for structural fires, for bush fires, for search and rescue, ice rescue, even accidents that happen on the highway.”
“This is something that the community 100 per cent supports. They know the need to have a structure in the community that’s going to ensure that all our children, our schools, our houses, our elders are all safe,” he said.
Although Wesley hasn’t been on the job six months yet, he has already verbally accepted to stay on for another year.
Along with securing the new partnership with the Timmins Fire Department, he said the community recently secured $20,000 in federal funding for additional equipment as well.
“We’re also looking into other resources to acquire other funds to purchase other much-needed equipment,” Wesley said.
While this is the first time Timmins and the Mattagami First Nation departments have worked together, Wesley said they do have an existing partnership with the Gogama fire department. Those two communities have a mutual aid agreement.
