Firefighters in a small Canadian community along the southeastern shore of Lake Winnipeg have threatened to resign if their recently fired chief is not reinstated.
CBC News reports that as many as 10,000 residents of the Rural Municipality of Victoria Beach could be without emergency fire and medical services as early as Tuesday morning if former fire chief Brad Patzer is not reinstated.
Patzer, who is also the municipality's emergency measures coordinator and health and safety officer, had been a volunteer firefighter for 30 years and was fire chief for the previous 12 before council voted 4-1 to fire him last Tuesday.
"The fire department feels that he has done nothing wrong and should not have been fired," Deputy Fire Chief Wolf Kraft told CBC News.
In a statement posted online, Victoria Beach official Brian Hodgson said Patzer was fired due to an ongoing conflict.
"For several months Mr. Patzer refused to communicate with the RM in the manner expected of an employee tasked with multiple and significant responsibilities," the statement said. "This behaviour placed the RM at increased risk of liability and was not proper or acceptable in an employee/employer relationship."
The 22-member department was scheduled to hold a vote Monday night to decide whether firefighters should remain on duty.
"You don't take an HR or workplace issue between personalities and people and fire your chief over it. It think this shows very poor leadership," Kraft said.
Several residents also expressed outrage over Patzer's firing and lauded his leadership and his firefighters for the work they do in the community.
"This is a small community with a very big heart, and I mean, this is terrible, what's going on," resident Colleen Henderson said. "The fact that they have done this to him is just mind-blowing."
