Office of the Fire Marshal still requesting more staff for the future

The Office of the Fire Marshal wants more staff and resources to inspect schools and hospitals in the province, repeating a request first recommended by an Auditor General in 1987 to fix “unduly lengthy”  inspection wait times in schools.

Fire Marshal Harold Pothier’s office is finally caught up on an inspection backlog in hospitals and schools dating back to at least 2010. The office posted a list of schools to be inspected on their website in response to a 2011 Auditor General report that raised concerns about school inspection frequencies.

The report said the office wasn’t doing an adequate job “protecting the public from fire safety risks in buildings” and outlined 26 recommendations that needed to be addressed.

“Our biggest concern is getting resources and requirements to meet our action plan to go forward,” said Pothier. “(The staffing requests) are going through the process at this time. We wait to hear word from the province on a regular basis.”

The office was operating with 14 staff at the time of the audit, and had eight Deputy Fire Marshals in the field. Staffing changes were needed to fulfill the recommendations set out by the Auditor General.

“We now have 16 staff. We added two, and four staff members were also transferred to us from another division. Essentially, we raised our levels by six people,” said Pothier. He notes the number jumped from 14 to 16, and those four people were already in the department.

“We just saw a realigning of their duties,” he said.

They still have eight inspectors in the field, the same number as 2010. However, with one staff member working on the database full-time and other administrative duties taken off inspectors’ shoulders, they are able to focus more on inspections.

“It is much easier to meet our mandate now,” said Pothier.

Report put fire inspections under microscope

When the Office of the Fire Marshal came under scrutiny from the Auditor General, the report that followed outlined numerous problems, chief among them being the infrequency of building inspections and the lack of a reporting system for organizing what inspections were done and when.

“The Office of the Fire Marshal is not meeting minimum fire safety inspection frequencies specified in legislation,” the report said.

The minutes of a Jan. 2012 Public Accounts meeting in the legislature, which Pothier attended, show the challenges the office faced in regard to not keeping track of their inspections.

Associate Deputy Minister for the Department of Labour and Advanced Education Jeff Conrad said the Auditor General was left “in a difficult spot” when he did his audit.

“We are saying to him that we’ve been there … but there’s absolutely no proof. As I’ve said, certainly the … material that we’ve been able to find indicates that we’ve been in the facilities that we’re supposed to be in doing the work – not doing it as we’re supposed to do it, I will grant absolutely.”

Pothier was promoted to acting fire marshal in May 2010, and that position has since been made official.

He wouldn’t comment about the bookkeeping and backlogged inspections he observed before he became Fire Marshal, despite being the Deputy Fire Marshal since 1992 in the office at the time of the audit.

“I can only comment on my involvement directly. I took the position and met with the Department of Labour (and Advanced Education). We took on the firm commitment to deal with all the Auditor General’s recommendations at that time.”

Office is finally catching up

In the last three years, his office has inspected all backlogged hospitals and schools except one school district, which they hope to have finished by “early September.”

“This coming fall, we’ll commence our next cycle. We’re right on schedule,” said Pothier.

Of the 26 recommendations put forward between April 2009 and February 2013, the office has completed 14 as of June, according to their departmental update. The other 12 are listed as “works in progress,” but some significant recommendations still don’t have a permanent fix.

An interim system for tracking inspections is in place, but Pothier says the fire marshals and provincial government are still working on a “permanent database solution across government.”

The update document says a local Information Technology consultant has been “working on the database since Feb. 2012”, which the (Office of the Fire Marshal) is “implementing phase one of.”

Missed inspections, poor bookkeeping and a lack of basic guidelines were brought to light in the Auditor General’s report.

“We determined fire safety inspections are not taking place as required by legislation or policy,” the Auditor General report stated.

It also found “untimely reporting” of serious issues in buildings and “no evidence of follow-up” on problems they did end up finding.

Pothier says the biggest problem in his department was a “documentation issue.”

“We know the work was being done … But without a database or documentation, it was hard to argue what work was done and what wasn’t. We feel we can show what work is being done now.”

The department did have a database, called the Fire Department Management System, but it did not “capture important information on fire inspection and fire investigation activities.

The Fire Department Management System does not “include an inventory of all buildings requiring inspections by the Office of the Fire Marshal nor are all completed inspections and investigations recorded in the database,” the report said.

Staffing levels continue to be a concern

Pothier has more staff and is still asking for more, but staffing levels aren’t a new issue within the office.

Many of the issues that plagued the office in 1987, 2001 and 2010 were the same.

“The inspection intervals for school inspections … seem unduly lengthy. The Fire Marshal’s Office has not been able to carry out its inspections of hospitals within the frequency it would like,” said the report.

In 2001’s Auditor General report, there were still “numerous instances of noncompliance with public safety legislation” and the office was still “unable to comply with the frequency of inspections specified in legislation or policies.”

The perceived reasons for these issues was the “limited resources available to the Office.” The Auditor General recommended a need for more resources in 1987.

Robert Cormier was the fire marshal for the province for 16 years before his retirement in 2010.

“There was only one reason we had trouble, and that was a lack of resources,” he said.

“The municipalities refused to take responsibility for inspecting schools under the Fire Safety Act,” he said. Halifax is excluded, as they inspect their own schools.

That’s approximately 525 schools (to inspect), added to the other things that needed to be done … We had someone set specifically for inspecting schools and they couldn’t get it done.”

He cited travel distance, preparation for inspection, reports and office responsibilities as things that could suck up inspectors’ time.

“Without the adequate resources, you can’t carry out elevated inspections unless you’re incompetent in them. We had eight inspectors at that time with vacation time.

They also did fire investigations and had to log travel time … People don’t recognize the issues going into timing for people who have to carry out these activities.”

“I believe we were doing as good a job as anyone in this country with the resources we had.”

Cormier wouldn’t comment on whether he had ever asked the Department of Labour for more staff and resources.

“All I can say is there weren’t adequate resources to carry out the work in accordance with Auditor General called for in the reports.”

The Department of Labour wouldn’t comment on why staffing levels weren’t increased after the 1987 or 2001 reports.

“We can’t speak to why previous governments did or didn’t do things to implement the auditor general’s recommendations,” said Chrissy Matheson with the Department of Labour in an emailed statement.

“What I can say is when the province received the auditor general’s report in 2011, the importance of making changes to the system to protect the health and safety of Nova Scotians was recognized and understood.”

“This is not to say that the process has been seamless. There have been some challenges with changing technology and resources, and we are working through that and remain on track.”

Pothier is looking forward to the future of the Office of the Fire Marshal.

“We are taking a little more time to fulfill our documentation. Things are being overseen and put in a database, and things are flowing as we like to see it,” he said.

“I think the recommendations were a benefit and helped in our work process. They helped us move forward.”