Enbridge's Line 3 Replacement Program helps fuel a safer Saskatchewan
It’s the last thing Fire Chief Brent Zerr and his crew want to do after responding to a 2 a.m. emergency page.
But when their aging, ailing rescue truck acts up on the way back to the station after the call, the volunteers from the Kerrobert, Sask., and District Fire Department have no choice but to put their Plan ‘B’ in motion.
“When you’re emergency services, you need to have a vehicle ready at all times,” says Zerr. “So when our truck breaks down, we need to make sure we have another vehicle packed up and ready to go, even if it is the middle of the night.”
Mechanical issues with the station’s rescue truck are par for the course these days. For this and many other reasons, Zerr and his volunteer colleagues are thrilled they’ll soon have a new truck at the station.
This year, with the help of Enbridge grants totaling $42,500, the department achieved its $250,000 fundraising goal and ordered a new, more suitable rescue vehicle, due to arrive this fall.
Enbridge’s Safe Community program — which has contributed $7-million to North American emergency response organizations since its launch in 2002 — provided $12,500 towards the purchase of the rescue vehicle. The remaining $30,000 came in the form of a one-time grant from Enbridge’s Line 3 Replacement Program, which is investing in communities affected by the proposed replacement of Line 3 from Hardisty, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin.
Back in 2002, the Kerrobert Fire Department inherited a retrofitted four-year-old ambulance for use as its rescue truck, but the truck has aged and the community has grown considerably. Kerrobert’s volunteer-run fire department provides emergency services across a huge area of the Canadian prairies— about 2,100-square-miles.
“Right now, the old unit can’t handle all the equipment we need for some of the calls,” says Zerr. “ It’s just not designed for the heavy equipment that we need it to carry, so it doesn’t handle well on the gravel roads we need to travel on.”
Enbridge owns and operates the world’s longest and most complex crude oil and liquids transportation system, and Enbridge employees work and live in myriad communities along our pipeline rights-of-way.
Those Enbridge employees often volunteer for the local fire department – and that’s exactly the case in Kerrobert, where three members of our workforce at Kerrobert Station respond to emergency calls, day or night, with the rest of Zerr’s crew.
The proposed Line 3 Replacement Program is expected to generate $183-million in provincial and federal taxes in Saskatchewan, and contribute more than $1-billion to the province’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), during its construction phase.
Lisa Seeley, a public affairs advisor for Enbridge’s Western Region, says our close and longstanding ties to Kerrobert made supporting the town’s first responders feel like the right thing to do.
“Kerrobert has been welcoming of Enbridge and our people,” says Seeley. “We want to ensure we’re offering support and being a good neighbor in response.”
