In light of what was published on the front page of le Journal de Montréal on Wednesday, October 5, 2011 with the shocking title “La borne-incendie était à sec” and the page 3 story entitled « Pas d’eau pour les pompiers », the Town wants to reassure its community that the water supply or the functioning of any fire hydrant was never an issue during the firefighters’ intervention on March 22, 2011.

The intervention was done by the book. Our firefighters not only followed the protocol step by step but also met all fire intervention requirements established by le Ministère de la sécurité publique’s Fire Safety Cover plan.

During this specific intervention, once on the scene of the fire and in light of information given to our firefighters, they were led to believe a family member might still be trapped inside. Firefighters’ no.1 rule in combatting a fire is to proceed to a search-rescue and evacuation operation and then eradicate the fire. And that’s exactly what they did: proceed to a search and rescue operation and an offensive attack from inside the building.

Our fire department responds to over 400 fire related emergencies and more than 700 medical related emergencies on a yearly basis. They are all trained according to the Public Security Ministry’s criteria. Firefighters have intervention plans, know the Town’s different sectors, and know which sectors are serviced or not by a water network. The Town also wants to mention that our firefighters are trained to combat fires in areas that are not serviced by an aqueduct network. They always arrive on location with tanker trucks ready to be deployed. Once a fire is over, the fire department refers any family in need to the Red Cross.