Changeover for Lethbridge County fire zones

Staff from Lethbridge County say the City of Lethbridge will no longer be the primary responder for emergencies in the county. Coaldale and Coalhurst will take up the mantle of bringing these zones into their areas with support from regional departments.

Lethbridge County Reeve, Tory Campbell, says there will be a seamless transition from all parties involved by the beginning of next year.

“This seed was planted a few years ago, I guess already the Town of Coaldale had indicated to us that they would like to expand their department, and therefore expand their response zone. So this has been something we’ve been working on for a long time now. Through the ICF process that we went through several years ago. Working with our smaller urbans, I think the focus was always to try and bring a little more continuity to those fire services agreements. Eventually, I think we realized that having six different fire contracts was a big challenge for us, I think. So to be able to slim that down a little bit with the Barons Fire Department going away and now changing our agreement with the city, I think this is something that the county has been working towards for a while now.”

Officials from Lethbridge County say service levels will not be impacted by these changes.