The soaring cost of diesel is becoming a growing concern for Nova Scotia’s volunteer fire departments who rely on the fuel to run the majority of their trucks.
Diesel prices have been in the range of $2.60 a litre, adding expenses to already stretched budgets.
“We have some of the highest prices we’ve ever seen,” said Rod Nielsen, chief of the Brookfield Volunteer Fire Department in southern Colchester County.
All of the department’s larger vehicles are diesel-operated, as well as some of the others the department uses.
“I would say the biggest problem would be trying to decide where to spend your money,” said Nielsen, who is also the president of the Fire Service Association of Nova Scotia.
“We need to make the runs, we need to do the training and we’ll cut budgets in some other place.”
Those decisions would be different for every department, he said, but could mean not running trucks as much for mutual aid training outside their districts, or potentially delaying the purchase of smaller-scale equipment such as flashlights or other items lower on department want lists.
The chief of the Caribou Volunteer Fire Department in Pictou County said the federal government’s decision to remove the excise tax on diesel has helped, but still cannot make up for the increase in the price over the last year.
“It’ll double our fuel budget,” said Chief Richard Heighton. “Diesel is twice as much as it was last year. Your budget is going to be twice as high, so that will definitely have an impact.”
The Caribou department is not one of the bigger operations, Heighton said, so things are manageable for now.
However, the department still runs fundraising drives like its lobster supper, along with yard sales.
Nielsen said paying more for furnace oil used to heat the big garages at fire halls is adding to the financial pressures on fire departments.
The cost of furnace oil has increased in the region of 40 per cent.
“A lot of our large fire services, large and small, are heated by furnace oil and that’s a big portion of some people’s budgets.”
Many of the buildings are not very efficient either, he said.
One of the most difficult things is the uncertainty of the situation, because prices have been high for some time.
“It’s sort of haunting us because we don’t know a timeline,” Nielsen said.
He wants to hear from any departments that are struggling, while monitoring the situation and hoping for some relief.
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