The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Seldom these days are people excited about working until the traditional retirement age of 65. It would seem even less common to find such individuals in a notoriously high-risk, high-stress jobs. Just call Jim Petrie one of the exceptions. Flin Flon's fire chief has been battling blazes for more than 20 years and still has the drive of a rookie. The Calgary native admits the job certainly isn't for everyone. He acknowledges it's filled with tension and hazards. Yet overshadowing it all is the satisfaction that comes from serving the people. That's what drove Petrie, a one-time oil rig worker in his home province, to the dangerous world of firefighting. And that's what keeps him enthused as the top man on the Flin Flon Fire Department's totem pole. The Reminder sat down with Petrie yesterday for a revealing one-on-one interview. * * * Reminder: What's the worst incident you've seen during your time in Flin Flon? Petrie: Obviously the apartment block fire over on Hemlock Drive [in June 2002]. That took a lot of elderly people out of their homes, and it was a very bad situation. Most of those individuals came to Hemlock with just the barest of their belongings. They had already scaled down, and a lot of them lost everything. Reminder: It certainly could have been worse. Petrie: It could have been worse. We've been very lucky in this community because we haven't really had any fire deaths, and I think that's a lot to do with luck. It's also to do with fire prevention. Many people have smoke detectors in their homes and fire extinguishers and CO2 detectors, etcetera. Reminder: Flin Flon is filled with older buildings, and older buildings are more susceptible to fire. Is this a unique problem facing the community? Petrie: Every community has older buildings. We just happen to have lots of them. The older the building, the more susceptible it is to burning, obviously. It's a problem everywhere. You go to Saskatoon or any one of these outlying communities, you'll find the same thing. Reminder: You're always on call. You can never sit down and plan out an evening because there might be a fire. That must wear on you. Petrie: The position is extremely stressful at times, but it's only as stressful as you make it. Over the years, I've gotten to the point where the stress level has diminished greatly because I'm able to handle that type of stress very well. If the fire phone rings, it rings. If it doesn't, it doesn't. If it doesn't ring, I don't even think about it. And that takes many years to develop. Reminder: What do you like about firefighting? Petrie: Firefighting isn't a job, it's a way of life. It's something you do because you love doing it. You love serving the public, you love helping out. Every time you help somebody, it's a good feeling that you get. When we go to a fire, if we can save some of the person's property through property conservation, through putting tarps on everything, we feel good. If we can get there and knock the fire down real fast and even maybe just save half the house, we feel real good. It's that feeling of service to the community that's so important. Reminder: How do Flin Flon's volunteer firefighters stack up compared to those in other communities? See 'Fire' P.# Con't from P.# Petrie: The volunteer firefighters here are extremely well-trained. We have a training regiment in place right now. I've put through two level one courses. I'm running a level two course right now. What these courses entail is a full year of actual training and weekly training over and above that, and these firefighters are not paid for that. The firefighters here are superior. It's the training that makes the difference. If you go into a lot of departments, they don't have the money to pay the firefighters for the training. This city is very generous with their firefighters. It pays their firefighters to come to the weekly training and in doing so, the city fathers are protecting the community because if we are extremely well-trained, we can get to a fire real fast, we can save lives, we can save property and we can save the environment. That's our job. Our job is rescue, fire control and property conservation. Reminder: What kind of person becomes a firefighter? Petrie: People that become firefighters are, and this is going sound a little strange, but they are people that are very headstrong individuals. They like to get the job done. They also like to work, and they work well with others. It's sort of a mix of people. It's not a wishy-washy person, but it's a very strong individual with strong will that wants to serve the community. Any of these individuals put in a lot of their own time without being paid. Reminder: How do you sum up your role as fire chief? Petrie: Fire is an organized confusion, it really is. And I am the orchestrator of that confusion. So you have to be as organized yourself as you possibly can, you have to be organized at the fire hall before the fire, and you have to be organized at the fire. Reminder: You talked about the worst incident you've seen in Flin Flon. What about the worst incident in your career? Petrie: The worst one I went to was when I was just a junior firefighter. It involved four young children in a house. They had the back door nailed shut and the front door was hard to open. The house was fully involved and all four children died. And I was one of the firefighters that went in to recover the bodies. That was the worst one. From that day on, fire prevention became extremely important to me, because that was preventable. Reminder: How are you notified of a fire? Petrie: I carry my radio with me at all times. I have the fire phone at home as well so if it rings at two o'clock in the morning, I answer it. If there's an on-call individual besides me, I will let them take the call, but I will be listening. Reminder: How much longer do you have in this job? Petrie: I've probably got another 10 to 13 years left in firefighting as long as my physical and mental body can handle it. Firefighting is extremely high-pressure and it's very hard on you mentally because I work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I'd like to go until I'm 65, to tell you the truth. I love firefighting. Always have, always will. Reminder: Will you retire in Flin Flon? Petrie: We love the people here, we love the community. The fishing is fantastic. I really like the fishing and the northern area, and so does my wife, Barb. So we have made a decision that we will be staying in this area, period.
