The City of Cranbrook will now answer all fire and emergency calls for the entire Regional District of East Kootenay.
An agreement between the two local governments means Cranbrook fire hall will receive emergency dispatches from the 911 communications centre in Kelowna for incidents anywhere in the regional district.
Then a Cranbrook dispatcher will pass the emergency information on to fire departments in the incident’s protection area.
“It will be a great service to this valley,” said Dean McKerracher, board director for Elkford. “I want to thank Cranbrook for taking it on. Right now, when you have a fire in a municipality, one of the firemen has to sit at the office to take calls and relay messages. With this on board, we won’t have to do that. So that one fire fighter that would be in the hall will now be able to go out and fight the fire as well.”