Centre Wellington firefighters to provide water, ice, rope rescue services in north Wellington

NORTH WELLINGTON – Centre Wellington firefighters provide speciality rescue services in north Wellington, and that will soon be captured in an official agreement.  

Mapleton, Minto and Wellington North are set to sign an agreement with Centre Wellington for the fire department there to provide water, ice and rope rescue across the three north Wellington townships.

Fire chief Chris Harrow said the Tri Fire Service has been working with Centre Wellington “on kind of a handshake agreement, that if we needed anything they would come and help us, but ... we had to formalize this and get something in writing so that it’s covered for both agencies.

“This is the best that we could offer because of not being able to offer it ourselves,” he said. 

Wellington North council authorized township staff to sign the agreement on Aug. 10, and Mapleton and Minto followed suit the next day. 

Wellington North councillor Steve McCabe expressed surprise that Mapleton doesn’t have a water rescue team, “seeing as ... Conestogo Lake is open and extremely busy through the summer and spring and into fall.” 

Harrow said that was a great question and a couple factors played into the decision: incident data and extensiveness of training. 

“Our data shows that we are not doing very many rescues on the lake,” he said. 

And new regulations  around mandatory training to perform water rescues has made the technical certification out of reach for north Wellington firefighters. 

“It would take over 140 hours to get all of our firefighters certified to become water rescue technicians, and that’s on top of the training we already asked them to do.”

Harrow said he had a long discussion with the firefighters, “and most have said ‘at this time we just can’t do that much training.’

“It would equal up to 10 to 12 weekends they’d have to give up in a year to get the training done,” Harrow added.

“So at this point in time it makes more sense for us to sign the agreement with Centre Wellington and have them perform the actual rescue.” 

The main priority, he wrote, is to provide technical, water, ice, swift water and rope rescue services. 

Confined space and trench rescue “will be looked at another time.”

McCabe asked what the Centre Wellington firefighter’s response rate would be to reach northern parts of the county such as Mount Forest and Damascus. 

“It definitely will be lengthier,” Harrow said. 

"They are going to be dispatched at the exact same time as us, so they will be on the road at the same time, but it’s just a matter of drive time from Fergus to here on Highway 6 – so probably half an hour to 40 minutes would be the actual response time ... but considering the circumstances that’s the best we can do for what we are facing right now." 

Centre Wellington is charging each municipality $5,100 per year plus $583 per hour for the services, and will use those funds for speciality rescue training and equipment. 

Mapleton and Minto disbanded their water rescue and confined space rescue teams in 2024 after the training regulations became more intensive, according to a report Harrow was set to presented to both township councils.  

“It was determined the time for firefighters to dedicate to the discipline was excessive, so the difficult decision was made to disband the team,” he states in the report. 

Wellington North fire department also does not offer specialty rescue services (with Minto formerly providing speciality rescue services there), so the Tri Fire Service is looking to Centre Wellington to provide those services in north Wellington. 

Centre Wellington’s fire department offers all water services as well as rope and high angle rescue, and staff across the four municipalities have been negotiating an agreement for Centre Wellington to offer those services in Mapleton, Minto and Wellington North. 

Centre Wellington firefighters will be automatically dispatched to specialty rescue service calls through the Guelph Fire Dispatch. (Firefighters in Mapleton, Minto and Wellington North are also dispatched from Guelph, which Harrow said makes it generally easier for automatic dispatching to occur). 

Local firefighters will still attend the water rescue calls “to set everything up and get everything ready to go, and then when [Centre Wellington firefighters] arrive they would perform the actual rescue on the water for us,” Harrow said. 

“We can get stuff ready on the shore – we can establish the area, we can establish some ropes, etcetera, we just have to wait for them to get on the scene to perform the actual water rescue.”  

The agreement mitigates risk and “makes sense as Centre Wellington and the Tri Fire Service municipalities have worked together for several years and have a positive working relationship,” he added. 

“The main priority for technical rescue services are water and ice rescue, swift water rescue and rope rescues,” Harrow states. 

“The other services, confined space and trench rescue, will be reviewed at another time. Those services are challenging to find in any nearby municipalities.”