Looking ahead to the future of Vancouver Fire
Posted June 13, 2014 6:46 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Vancouver’s Fire Department, which started with a handful of volunteers, has grown to nearly 800 members.
When the Great Vancouver Fire devastated the city on June 13th, 1886, there was widespread devastation and panic about rebuilding the future.
Several blocks of the city were destroyed, 1,000 wooden buildings were turned to ash, and at least eight people died. Vancouver, at that point, was a brand-new city.
Captain Gabe Roder says there’s a rich history that most people don’t know anything about and the department wants to show it off in a firefighters museum, which would feature old equipment, including antique fire trucks.
“The 1912 American LaFrance is very finicky. It’s an artifact that we don’t really want to put too much stress on. [Anything that’s] getting super-old — you need to take a little more care of it if you want to make it last longer. But we still want these old vehicles to be able to be on display so people can enjoy them.”
The goal is to have a museum open and free to the public by 2018, but someone has to pay for it. Despite that problem, Roder is hopeful and confident it will happen.
“The fire department is multi-faceted. We have people from all over the world as firefighters and the bottom line is the fire department has grown into something that, I think, we can say we’re very proud of [for] what we offer the community.”
Today also marks Roder’s last day with the Vancouver Fire Department, after more than two decades of service.
