ManitobaNick Kasper said it took the first fire crews nine minutes and 40 seconds to arrive, which he says is more than twice the national four-minute standard. A full complement of firefighters needed to properly fight the fire did not arrive for approximately 20 minutes after the call, he said.UFFW president says response time for fire crews was more than double the national standardCBC News · Posted: Aug 11, 2025 11:35 AM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hour agoFirefighters were called to a home on Southwalk Bay on Sunday evening to fight a fire that had fully engulfed the home, located in the city’s St. Vital area. (Submitted by Stephanie Kulczycki)The head of Winnipeg’s firefighter’s union is pleading for the city to put more funding into fire and emergency services, after it took more than nine minutes for fire crews to arrive at a fire that gutted a St. Vital home this weekend.”I can appreciate we have a limited revenue stream here in Winnipeg, but this is an essential service, and when it’s not funded, these are the results we see,” United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg president Nick Kasper said on Monday. On Sunday evening around 7:40 p.m., fire crews were called to a home on Southwalk Bay in St. Vital. When they arrived, the home was fully engulfed in flames. According to Kasper, the closest fire station was Station 26 on Dakota Street, about a kilometre away, but when the call came in there were no trucks available at that station, so crews had to be called in from stations farther away.Kasper said it took the first fire crews nine minutes and 40 seconds to arrive, which he says is more than twice the national four-minute standard. A full complement of firefighters needed to properly fight the fire did not arrive for approximately 20 minutes after the call, he said.”So we’re over double the response time,” he said.Nick Kasper the president of United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg is pleading for the city to put more funding into fire and emergency services, after it took more than nine minutes for fire crews to arrive on scene of a fire that gutted a St. Vital home on Sunday. (CBC)Kasper said he doesn’t know why a truck wasn’t available at Station 26, but said having trucks unavailable in Winnipeg is happening more and more. “Generally speaking this is not unusual,” Kasper said. “Our stations are strategically located throughout the city to allow our trucks to make it within that four-minute response time and of course, if they’re not there, the next truck has to come from farther away.”So simply put, we don’t have enough resources in Winnipeg to meet the continually increasing demand, and our response times are getting longer and longer, year after year.”He called the response time to Sunday’s fire another “example of many situations we’re facing, that seem to have become the norm.””The problem that we’re seeing is chronic and it’s widespread in that we simply do not have enough fire trucks throughout the entire city to respond to the call volumes that we have,” he said. “And that’s further compounded by the fact that we don’t have enough firefighters to staff the limited number of fire trucks that we do.”Kasper is now asking the city for increased funding and resources for fire and emergency services, or he said more structures will be destroyed, which could lead to injuries and possible fatalities. “We have the slowest response times to those structured fires in the country by minutes, and this is simply not an acceptable level of service,” he said. “Winnipeggers deserve better and it’s time to allocate the resources necessary to deliver the level of service that we’re measured against.”According to a city release, as firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze, they also protected nearby homes from the spreading flames, although one other home did sustain some damage. The fire was declared under control just before 9:30 p.m., while one firefighter sustained a minor injury and was assessed by paramedics on scene. No hospitalization was required, the release stated.The burned home is now a total loss, and no information on the extent of the damage to the second home has been provided. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Winnipeg firefighters union says more staff needed to keep up with callsThe union representing firefighters in Winnipeg is calling for more staff and more trucks, after the response to a house fire in St. Vital was seriously delayed.
Union boss sounds alarm over response time to St. Vital blaze
