The Alberta Fire Chiefs Association is concerned that members of the Alberta fire service who are not part of the Government’s emergency medical community are being expected to provide the same services but without the vaccine protection now being given to other emergency responders.

On Monday (January 11) Jason Kenny took the podium during the COVID-19 provincial update and announced the expansion of the vaccine eligibility to Paramedics and EMS. 

;provide emergency medical first response care to Albertans, especially in rural areas where they respond together and, a lot of the time, fire is the first on scene and up to 70 percent of Fire Department calls are to medical emergencies.

If members aren't getting the vaccination, it puts communities at risk for a number of reasons like having to rely on help to respond to a call, "What happens is, we do our contract tracing of who a firefighter may have come into contact with, within the station," explains Airdrie Fire Chief Kevin Weinberger.  "We do have, right now through COVID, our teams isolated to their own stations where we're not, I call it cross-contaminating our people. But, at any given time if we have one that would tests positive or fall ill, we're taking down six or seven people out of that platoon. If that happens, they have to rely on help from mutual partners. 

As firefighters, they are called in to help resolve situations for the betterment of our community and not being vaccinated could potentially make things worse, "Our calls can be in vulnerable situations, where we are going to care facilities, remand centre type facilities or RCMP buildings, we are dealing with people that we also have to also protect, I mean that's our first go-to is we're there to not make an incident worse and if our people are at risk and aren't vaccinated, then risks continue, " says Weinberger. He goes on to say they have no way of knowing they are at risk and have to jump right in to help "Our firefighters are at great risk of contracting the virus. All of our responses are dealing with vulnerable people or people who are at risk and no matter what it is, whether it's a fire, whether it's a co-medical response and we don't know when we arrive on a scene, we're just there to service the call."

With the announcement that medical responders will now get the vaccine, volunteer and career firefighters are left to wonder about how their service to Albertans is viewed, and the Alberta Fire Chiefs Association is concerned that members of the Alberta fire service who are not part of the Government’s emergency medical community are being expected to provide the same services but without the vaccine protection now being given to other emergency responders. 

They have sent a letter to officials in hopes of encouraging government leaders to designate members of the fire service who are at risk as eligible recipients of the vaccine during the Phase1A rollout along with those who they respond with to the same emergencies.

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