Image Credit: Asaja Nielsen

By Michael Reeve

FIRE HALL #6

KFR union president highlights importance of Dallas expansion amid budget deliberations

Nov 28, 2025 | 5:11 PM

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops city council has directed to staff to bring back a number of potential changes to the preliminary budget in an effort to lower the tax rate, currently set at just over 10 per cent.

A number of ideas were thrown out by council at a recent Committee of the Whole meeting, including pausing the hiring of new RCMP officers and pushing various projects to future years. One project that the local firefighters’ union is hoping to move forward is making the Dallas fire hall a full-time, career station.

“We are seeing an increase in call volumes in all of our districts. Valleyview is currently the full-time station that responds out here. They are the second-busiest engine company in the city, they had a 77 per cent increase in call volume from 2019 to 2023,” outlined Jeremy Brodtrick, IAFF Local 913 president. “There becomes a point where their response capabilities out here are limited. I worked last night on the rescue truck and we were first in to a medical incident out past Lafarge, we had an auxiliary or paid on-call compliment respond but they were still behind us yet we are responding from Sahali.”

Brodtrick stated the union is very thankful for the on-call response, but with paid-on-call staffing any calls to the Dallas area also includes a engine responding from Valleyview or Sahali that stretches the coverage thinner in every corner of the city.

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“This is about protecting the citizens in Dallas, Barnhartvale, Campbell Creek, but it’s also about protecting our firefighters,” said Brodtrick. “We operate with 22 firefighters on duty right now, which stretches our resources pretty thin when we get a major conflagration or fire — whether wildfire, grass fire, structure fire, even our technical rescue scenarios. We stretch our resources pretty thin, so having a staffed fire station out here is prudent for the residents out here, but it’s also important for our safety elsewhere in the city.”

The business case in front of council includes a new water tender — as water supply remains an issue in that area of the city — and a new fire hall to properly accommodate a full time crew.