2009 was a busy year for the Hanover Fire Department.
The Fire Department responded to 84 calls in total last year — an increase of two calls over 2008.
79 per cent of those calls were in Hanover, 14 per cent in West Grey and 7 per cent in Brockton.
Fire Chief Ken Roseborough is pleased with the numbers, calling it an excellent call volume for a municipality of Hanover’s size.
40 per cent of the calls were due to false alarms.
18 per cent involved property fires, while the remaining 42 per cent included other responses, public hazard, rescue and medical assist calls.
There were two structural fires within Hanover — one was a house fire, the other was a single car garage fire.
Roseborough notes that training in 2009 was aggressive and added a considerable work load on each member of the department.
The payoff however is that Hanover is the only fire department in the southern portion of Grey Bruce with specialized training in Water, Ice and Confined Space rescue programs.
Because of all of the training though, Roseborough says the fire department has fallen behind in its education and fire prevention programs.
He plans to rectify this by placing a heavy focus on fire prevention and public education programs this year.
