2017 Finance Annual Report

CITY OF SURREY OVERVIEWS FIRE DEPARTMENT

The Surrey Fire Services' mission is to protect life, property and the environment by responding to emergencies, ensuring regulatory compliance and developing community education. Surrey Fire Services helps to make our City a safe place to live. In addition to the department’s administration division, there are two other divisions which include:

SURREY EMERGENCY PROGRAM Surrey’s Emergency Program includes Neighbourhood Emergency Preparedness Program (NEPP); Business Emergency Preparedness Program (BEPP); Surrey Emergency Program Amateur Radio (SEPAR); Surrey Search and Rescue (SSAR); and Emergency Social Services (ESS), Level One: Personal Disaster Assistance. Through these programs, City staff and the large network of volunteers provide valuable community emergency services.

OPERATIONS Operations is the largest division and is responsible for emergency medical services; fire suppression; and hazardous materials response and rescue activities. In addition to the above activities handled by the Suppression branch, the Operations division is also responsible for the Prevention branch and the Training branch.

2 0 1 7 A C C O M P L I S H M E N T S

• Expanded on cohort check-ins for pilot program of “Heart Outcomes Prevention and Evaluation—4” which leverages first responder presence in the community to promote, educate and link cohorts to appropriate medical channels to improve community health. • Continued to refine the Attendance Management Program that resulted in achieving a 61% perfect attendance. • Completed the upgrade of audio/visual communications systems for the City Emergency Operations Centre. • Improved the efficiency of the City’s Emergency Social Services response capabilities between the Fire Service Department and the Parks, Recreation and Culture Department and continued development of coordination between media team and emergency program. • Developed a cadre of City of Surrey Community Engagement Volunteers to deliver important emergency preparedness, smoke alarm, and fire and fall prevention messages to community groups. • Published 11 research articles and/or papers illustrating the evidence based

• Coordinated 18 Level 1 emergency support service responses with 93 displaced residents. • Supported 3,039 evacuees impacted by wildfires on behalf of the entire South West Region of BC. • Reduced fire related death and injuries in residential properties through the continued refinement of the Home Safe Program. Installed 253 smoke alarms, and conducted 99 HomeSafe inspections including the 7,667 smoke alarm initiative inspections; and promoted a smoke alarm awareness campaign directed to 2,453 homeowners who visited City Hall during the annual property tax season. • Completed redevelopment of Online Requests for Information through MySurrey Portal to increase cost efficiency of the current service model. New application will be made available for public use in 2018. • Redesigned internal procedures and reporting to support the expanded online invoice payment option. • Expanded service capacity, by adding a response Medical Engine Unit at Hall 2, to cost effectively address the Opioid Crisis using existing funding for lower cost per unit vehicles. • Received the 2017 Innovation Management Finalist Award by the Institute of Public Administration of Canada with regards to the Designing Out Crime Campaign.

• Inspected 51 properties, detected 10 illegal grow operations and issued 46 electrical repair notices through the Electrical Fire Safety Initiative Team (EFSI) who are responsible for inspecting properties showing indications of escalated likelihood of safety contraventions. • Increased smoke alarm verifications, comprised of assessing whether the smoke alarm unit was functioning at the time of a residential fire, from 15.7% in 2011 to 45.7% in 2017. • Decreased the residential fire rate of death/injury per 10,000 residents by 77% from 2006. • Decreased the residential fire rate per 1,000 residential structures by 58% from 2006. • Inspected 7,699 business properties and provided 7,249 safety educational inspection pamphlets to the business proprietors to bolster the City’s efforts to improve the resiliency of businesses in the event of a disaster or major incident. • Delivered 57 Surrey Neighbourhood Emergency Preparedness presentations to 1,192 attendees. In addition, staffed 36 emergency preparedness booths at various fairs, resulting in exposure to 12,312 additional individuals. The Business Emergency Preparedness Program, included delivery of 6,686 targeted disaster recovery educational pamphlets.

decision-making used for strategic planning and emergency activity.

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