An area fire chief was recently honoured for his five decades of service as a volunteer firefighter.
Fire Chief Wayne Benson, chief of the South Pigeon Lake Fire Department has seen a lot of changes in his years of service.
When Benson began in 1974 as a brand new firefighter, seatbelts in vehicles were voluntary use items, there were no airbags, and the majority of responses that firefighters rolled to were actually fires.
"We get people now that have gone through some pretty horrendous wrecks and come out of it with minor injuries as compared to what it was in the 70s," said Benson. "We've had some pretty horrendous rollovers and, you know, all kinds of issues with that."
Another change Benson has noticed is medical calls; when Benson started, firefighters did not roll to medical calls, now, he says they account for 25 per cent or more of the department's 130 calls per year.
Firefighters responding to medical calls is thanks to Alberta's Medical First Responder program, which sees volunteer firefighters trained as medical responders due to the shortage of medics in the province.
"It's really modified our training," said Benson. "We're not dealing with crash-and-smash scenarios. We're dealing with heart attacks and strokes."
The additional responsibilities of firefighting work aren't the only thing that has changed for volunteer firefighters; the very scope of their core work, firefighting, has as well.
Benson says that when he started, with the legacy fuels of the day being slower-burning, firefighters actually had time to respond and conduct an interior attack on a structure if it caught fire.
Today, with construction including styrofoam, manufactured wood products containing excessive amounts of glue, and other flammable substances, a structure can be fully enflamed in as little as three minutes.
"It used to be they used to consider 20 minutes (to get out of a house fire)," said Benson. "Now, it's three minutes. That's a hell of a difference."
Benson began his career as a volunteer firefighter in Oyen, Alta., eventually rising to the position of training officer and deputy chief.
In 1998, Benson moved to the Pigeon Lake area, joining another department, again quickly ending up as training officer and deputy chief. Bensen transferred between multiple Wetaskiwin area departments before ending up as the chief of South Pigeon Lake in 2016.
"I got transferred down there to the biggest, and busiest, hall in the county," said Benson.
Benson initially started as that department's training officer, but "unbeknownst to what I wanted. I ended up becoming chief down there" in fairly short order.
Things haven't always been smooth sailing for Benson over his 50 years.
Around 30 years into his career, Bensen had his first setback, dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.
"I got lucky," said Benson. "I was able to crawl out of that dark tunnel quickly."
A few years later, now in his early 60s, Benson dealt with another incident.
Benson was at the hall and began feeling discomfort in his chest. As the firehall shared space with the local ambulance, and the crew was actually in, he had one of the paramedics check him over and it was quickly determined that he was having a heart attack.
Calling medical control, the medic was able to treat Benson there before transporting him to the hospital, saving his life. Ultimately, Bensen needed one stent placed in his heart but because of the rapid treatment, Bensen was informed that there was zero damage as a result of the heart attack.
A third challenge happened to Benson as he was working in Northern B.C. during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Benson ended up with a rash on his back and it was anything but benign. It was the manifestation of a rare type of leukemia. Benson says that the type of leukemia is so rare, he is only the 12th recorded case of it, and the sole survivor.
Treatment for the disease required a special form of chemotherapy available from the United Kingdom and a stem cell transplant. Even with both those treatments, the prognosis was bleak, with only around a 25 per cent survival rate.
According to Benson, a diagnosis of cancer is not a surprise for firefighters, with around 60 per cent of those in the vocation being diagnosed in their lifetime.
"I don't know why, but my body worked," said Benson.
Despite the odds, Benson was able to return to both his work in the oilfield and the fire hall.
The South Pigeon Lake Fire Department has a complement of around 25 volunteers and is capable of responding to medical calls, motor vehicle collisions, ice rescue calls, and water calls on the lake.
Benson was honoured for his years of service in a ceremony held earlier in November, at which he was presented a plaque by MLA Rick Wilson.
-This story was updated to correct the spelling of Chief Benson's last name.
