If you followed the maelstrom of news updates emerging from the Upper Tantallon wildfires, it is almost assured that some of what you read—be it from The Coast, or any other news outlet—began, at some point, with the work of Twitter personality @HRMFireNews. Halifax’s most persistent source of fire updates has become somewhat of an underground celebrity across Nova Scotia in recent weeks: A name that almost everyone knows, and yet nobody truly knows at all. He has broken news of brush fires. Consistently—and accurately—shared fire updates before the HRM’s official notices have gone public. Kept tens of thousands of Haligonians in the loop as wildfires burned out of control for a week straight. And yet, despite amassing over 61,000 Twitter followers, he’d prefer it if you knew nothing about him.
Beyond the obvious mystery of an internet personality who’s remained entirely outside of the limelight, there are more burning questions: Where does he get his intel from? How does he fact-check his information? And how has he built trust within the ranks of HRM’s firefighters from behind a computer screen? The Coast spoke with @HRMFireNews under the condition of anonymity. (The one thing he would verify is that he does, indeed, use “he” and “him/his” pronouns.)
The following interview has been edited and condensed.
The Coast: First up, who are you? I know you want to remain anonymous, but can you help us get an idea of where your passion and expertise comes from?
HRM Fire News: Good question. I was always interested in the fire department, but found myself in a position where I was unable to formally volunteer or apply to the career side. Many years ago now, I found myself curious about what Halifax Regional Fire & Emergency was responding to on a given day—but I found there was little to no information available. Like many people, I wanted to know where the fire trucks were going and what was happening once they arrived.
I also found that my curiosity wasn’t always satisfied by conventional news coverage or official publications. I was aware that hobbyists had started these types of pages elsewhere, so I thought I’d give it a try and see if people found the service to be interesting or helpful. If you had told me back then I’d still be doing it today, I would have laughed, but it has taken on a life of its own.
I want to be clear that I have no expertise in firefighting—I’ve never done the job. I ask a lot of questions, though. The members of the fire department have been very generous with their expertise in explaining things to me over the years, and I then take that information and use it to help inform people. I’ve certainly learned a lot, but what I do is basically translate information from the real experts and get it out to the people.
Congratulations! You’re a journalist. That’s essentially our job description.
That’s basically how I see it, yes!
Is there something about fire, specifically, that interests you?
I enjoy learning about responses. Every aspect. The trucks, the equipment, the tactics—the technical side of things, you could say. I find the work our firefighters do to be really impressive. It’s subjective, but I personally don’t find police or EHS all that interesting by comparison. (Not to take anything away from those important professions.)
How did the relationship with your fire sources start? Were they initially skeptical? Supportive?
It took some time to build trust. My commitment to any sources is that they always have anonymity, and that I will always support the work of front line members. Some people were skeptical initially, for sure, but over time, hopefully I’ve developed a track record where people see what I’m trying to do in terms of informing the public and view it as a good thing. Sometimes the page serves as an outlet for people who want to raise a bit of awareness on certain issues. I try to be respectful to HRFE while stating the facts as I see them.
What’s your approach to navigating that line between facts and advocacy?
I try to be very clear when I am stating an opinion versus stating facts. When it comes to posting about incidents, it’s all fact-based: “This unit is going to this location as a result of this emergency.”
I try very hard to be as accurate as possible and stay away from speculation or commentary when it comes to incidents. Take the Tantallon wildfire, for instance—the page was inundated with questions asking me to speculate on which neighbourhoods would be evacuated, where the fire would travel, et cetera. I deferred to known facts and official sources. Speculation, in those cases, does nobody any good and can cause harm. I take that very seriously.
Separate from reporting on incidents, I do occasionally share views or opinions about fire and emergency issues. In those cases, I try to make it very clear when I am expressing an opinion versus stating facts. While most of what I do on here is posting facts and information, I do think there have been some cases where opinions or commentary shared by the page helped apply pressure or raise awareness on a given issue that led to improved outcomes.
Can you give an example? On a related note, I’ve been doing some research into the city’s fire safety infrastructure and preparedness. Frankly, I’m alarmed by the state of things. Should I be concerned?
One area I pay very close attention to is the department’s response protocols. By this, I mean which units and trucks respond to what incidents, based on where they are. For one, I think it’s important. I also like to think I’ve accumulated some knowledge on the subject, and with help from those on the front lines, I’ve been able to flag problems and help to get them fixed.
For instance, it used to be the case that the neighbourhoods of Kingswood and Lucasville were only served by the Hammonds Plains fire station on evenings and weekends, when the area was covered by volunteers only. The two nearby stations, in Bedford and Middle Sackville, both have career staff. Looking at the response patterns, it seemed clear that those stations could easily quicken response times to Kingswood and Lucasville—but they weren’t being called. Some of the fire department members raised their concerns through their chain of command. I tried to apply some pressure publicly to bring awareness to it. Eventually, it got changed. To this day, evening and weekend response times in those neighbourhoods have greatly improved.
Of course, there’s no way for me to know for sure which of my recommendations they listen to, or what I may be directly responsible for. I don’t really care. And it’s worth mentioning, it’s usually fire department members who are raising these concerns first. The important thing is that these changes can make a difference in life-or-death situations.
I think there are also times when the things I do have filled in gaps in the fire department’s messaging and actually helped HRFE out.
I’ll speak in general terms in response to your second question. The fire chief [Ken Stuebing] has been clear about the challenges of the HRM’s growth, and I largely agree with much of what he has said. The number one thing, in my view, is how many firefighters can the department get on scene, and how quickly? That’s basically it, whether you’re talking about Glen Arbour or Fenwick Tower or a cabin in Upper Musquodoboit.
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There are a lot of other important things worth looking at: Water supplies, community planning, fire prevention, trucks and equipment, station locations, et cetera. While the recent wildfires were highly unfortunate, hopefully it can serve as a catalyst to drive some improvements.
Growth is a challenge the department is facing, no question—though I think the HRM is largely well-served by its fire department. There are strengths and weaknesses. There’s no declarative way to say “safe” or “unsafe;” in my view, it’s about “safer” and “less safe.” Hopefully everything gets a close look after this incident.
Now that you’ve been at this for some time—and especially in the wake of the Tantallon fires—do you feel an obligation to continue doing this, even if there are times you might not want to? Or have you felt that obligation before? And outside of this, who are you when you’re not at your keyboard? Kate Ross (Halifax Noise) does what she does with, like, 14 phones. Is your setup at all similar?
I enjoy doing it, but I do feel a sense of obligation at times—especially when something significant happens. I want to get people the information they want and need. One doesn’t get to choose when a significant call comes in, so that can disrupt plans and day-to-day life. Of course, it isn’t a job per se—and people who follow my fire updates understand when I’m not around. But when something happens, I want to be on top of it. That can be hard to manage. I’ve always figured I’d do it until it wasn’t rewarding anymore—and that day hasn’t come yet, fortunately.
In terms of my setup, I have about 10 pieces of hardware and a handful of software [applications] that I use. I’ve invested a lot in making sure I have a highly redundant system. I want to be reliable to the people [who read my updates], no matter what happens. It’s served me well through multiple hurricanes and prolonged power outages: I’m proud to say that through none of those events has my service ever been interrupted.
In terms of me outside of this, I’m a pretty low-key, private person. One has to have a lot of free time to do this successfully, ha ha.
Is there anything you want people to know about fire services in the HRM? Is there anything you’d change about our setup (big or small) to make it better? If so, what and why?
I think people are by and large very well served by their fire department in HRM. The front line members do great work day to day to keep people safe. There are always things that could be improved. I’ll mention one narrower concern and one big picture item.
First, the narrower concern, which is a hobby horse of mine. The fire department has almost no communications capacity. It is an organization of almost 600 full-time employees and over a thousand personnel in total and not one single person is dedicated to public communications. It hurts the department and the public. They need a dedicated communications staff to get their message out and actually start using the social media tools of the current century more effectively. There is a big opportunity there.
There’s also something unacceptable about the fact the department is basically silent in terms of communications when emergencies happen. Their press conferences and spokespeople are usually good, but other than that the overall communications approach needs a ton of work.
Secondly, more of a general comment, I think the powers that be need to get focused on the fact that operations *is* the fire department. Operations is 90% of the budget and almost 100% of what the public cares about. Headquarters has a lot of side projects and other initiatives and money and people and time dedicated to things that have nothing to do with operations. Many of these may be worthy initiatives but the number one thing, in my opinion, is getting enough firefighters on enough trucks to get to someone’s door as quickly as possible to make a difference. I think the department would be improved if headquarters focused more on that and less on side projects.
Oh, and I have my always-last question: Is there something you wanted to talk about that I didn’t know to ask?
I want to reiterate how much I really appreciate everybody who has supported the page by following, encouraging, providing information and feedback, etc. I’d like to thank them and also thank you for the interest as well. I appreciate the trust people place in me to keep them informed about the fire department.
—With files from Martin Bauman.
This article appears in Jun 1-30, 2023.