Kitchener takes over fire dispatch services in Stratford

Fire services in Stratford will soon be dispatched out of Kitchener.

Kitchener Fire Chief Bob Gilmore says the local department already dispatches for Waterloo, Cambridge and Waterloo Region’s four townships. Now they’re adding the City of Stratford to the list.

“The big reason it’s happening is the CRTC [Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission] is implementing what they call Next Generation 9-1-1 and [for] a lot of the smaller dispatch centres, it’s an exorbitant cost to upgrade their technology,” Gilmore said. “And so it’s trending throughout the province actually that the smaller centres are being absorbed by the bigger regions.”

The province says Next Generation 9-1-1 will allow the public to share more information with 911 dispatchers including text messages and video. It will also give emergency operators and dispatchers the ability to identify the location of a call using GPS coordinates.

Emergency communication centres across Ontario have until March 2025 to transition to the new system.

Last month, the province pledged to spend $78 million on telecommunications infrastructure to help municipalities and emergency response centres make the switch.

Kitchener Fire will get just under $714,000 of that money.

Gilmore says it won’t be a problem for Kitchener to take on Stratford’s call volume.

“Their call volume is approximately 2,400 calls a year. So we’re currently about 32,000 in the region, so we’d go to 34,000 [calls per year].”

Gilmore says employees with Stratford’s dispatch centre have been re-assigned and will not lose their jobs. Kitchener Fire currently has 17 dispatchers.