Firefighting service returning to Wabush airport

Firefighting services are returning to the Wabush Regional Airport, but local politicians say it isn’t going to be easy to get the services back up and running.

Transport Canada pulled the service from the airport in 2020, citing low passenger volume. At the time, the local MHA and the town’s mayor fought the decision to no avail. But according to a social media post by Labrador MP Yvonne Jones, the service will be reinstated this month.

“I am thrilled to announce that full Fire and Rescue Services will be reinstated at Wabush Airport by Transport Canada,” Jones wrote in a Nov. 20 Facebook post. “This vital service will ensure enhanced safety for travelers and airport staff, providing peace of mind for our community and those visiting Labrador. The new fire and rescue team will be in place by the New Year, marking a significant step forward in maintaining world-class safety standards for this important transportation hub. Thank you to everyone who advocated for this critical service and to Transport Canada for recognizing the need for this investment in our region.”

Labrador West MHA Jordan Brown said he was glad to see Jones’ announcement, but he is concerned that, with a federal election on the horizon, the move may have been timed to earn support. Brown is also concerned that it may prove challenging to find trained firefighters in the region or to bring them in.

“I gotta scratch my head,” he told The Independent. “The same government that took it away from us is going to bring it back, and then they’re celebrating it like it’s some kind of big win when in reality it’s just replacing a service that was taken from us.

“It clearly smells of election, it really smells of election.”

Brown said in 2020, and in the years since, the federal government wasn’t willing to hear anything about bringing the service back. But now that an election may be coming, the area was ‘blindsided’ with the service apparently coming back.

“I spoke with the mayors and we have a lot of questions on the timeline and what’s going on,” he said. “How’s the tendering going to happen? Where will they find firefighters? It just seems like it was a very pull-out-of-a-hat kind of election promise.”

One of the mayors Brown spoke with was Ron Barron of Wabush, who said he first he heard of the service returning to the airport in his town was through Jones’ social media post, like everyone else, and he hasn’t heard anything official since.

“I’m very happy to hear that it’s coming back,” Barron said. “Transport Canada should have reinstated this some time ago, not just now. We just had a plane diverted from here the other day because of that—the plane had to make an emergency landing—and I believe it was diverted to Montreal. It was coming here with a load of fly-in workers for the mines.”

Barron said he’s sure the absence of proper firefighting services at the airport has led to other planes being diverted, and that he doesn’t understand why it was removed in the first place.

Brown and Barron said they didn’t think it would be that easy to get the service back at the airport since most of the firefighters who worked there have now left the area, and if new hires are brought in there’s nowhere for them to live.

“We have a 0 per cent vacancy rate in Lab West, and this isn’t a new issue,” Brown said. “There’s nowhere for people to stay, the mines have to fly people in and out, and both the provincial and federal governments turn a blind eye to the problem. The area is turning into a mining camp, plain and simple, and no one in government seems concerned — they just want to bury their heads in the sand and ignore it.”

Barron said the lack of housing is an issue in the area, and he expects the federal government to find the same issue with housing workers as everyone else. While hearing from Jones that the service is returning is good news, he said, he won’t be celebrating until it’s actually up and running sometime in the new year.

The Independent reached out to Jones and Transport Canada for comment on the service returning but did not receive a response by the time of publication.