By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
First responders in Osoyoos were honoured recently at the 4th Annual First Responders Awards Gala Dinner & Dance held at Spirit Ridge Resort.
Organized by the Rotary Club of Osoyoos, the annual event on January 25 sees Rotary organizing a gala awards dinner aimed at thanking the various first responders for their service to the community.
Reading a welcome from current Rotary Club of Osoyoos President Elliott Friedrich who was overseas attending an international Rotary event, President-Elect Larry Stone welcomed first responders and guests to the gala. This included the Anarchist Mountain Fire Department for the first time, joining the Osoyoos Fire Rescue, Osoyoos RCMP, BC Ambulance Service and the Oliver Osoyoos Search and Rescue.
“Tonight’s festivities are in thanks to all of you for keeping our community safe. As last year’s wildfire was so close to our community it is a testament to your dedication and ability to work closely together that no homes were lost and our community was kept safe. Thank you very much.
“Congratulations to all the award recipients tonight. I wish you all a fabulous and fun evening and thank you so much for all that you do and thank you for the town supporting this gala and coming out to support us.”
A special thanks went to Spirit Ridge Resort for their continued support of the event over the four years. “Without their support and complete dedication, we would never make this work, thank you.” Other corporate sponsors including Quail Security and McLean Construction were also thanked for their continued support of the event.
Constable Ian MacNeil (centre) with Sgt. Jason Bayda (left) and Larry Stone (right), was awarded Osoyoos RCMP Officer of the Year.
Stone also noted that typically each president dedicates time to a particular project during their term and his (from July this year) will see Rotary working with RCMP Sgt. Jason Bayda and the Town of Osoyoos to establish Osoyoos Lake’s first life jacket loan station. Rotary will help with fundraising and will be approaching local businesses for sponsorship.
Bayda added that he’s aiming for it to be an all-encompassing boating safety station with local boating safety information also available for those from out of town and may not be familiar with the local hazards.
On stage to present the award to the RCMP officer of the year, Bayda said “I just want to recognize all the other first responders here because without them we wouldn’t really have as much of a town as we do. “We are going to calls side by side each time. It’s all of us first responders working as a team and that’s how we get the job done.”
Picked by his peers, Constable Ian MacNeil was chosen for this year’s award as RCMP Officer of the Year for “stepping up in a supervisory role without question and with the utmost professionalism,” Bayda said.
Kyle Fossett (centre) with Naveen Narayan (left) and Larry Stone (right), was awarded Oliver Osoyoos Search and Rescue Volunteer of the Year.
The Oliver Osoyoos Search and Rescue’s Naveen Narayan awarded Kyle Fossett as this year’s recipient of the OOSAR Volunteer of the Year award. Fossett has been a team member for 15 years including being a board member for six years, running as president, vice president, secretary-treasurer, “everything that he can do for search and rescue,” said Narayan.
“He’s the go-to for our managers, members and the community. He consistently logs over 400 volunteer hours a year and that does not include emails or phone calls, that’s just for search and rescue.
“He’s is our GSAR [Ground Search and Rescue] team lead from 2019 and he instructs our new members in training and procedures huge veteran computer whiz for the team.” Fossett is also the main contact for other teams in BC at all levels of SAR administration and he recently graduated from the EMR course with BC Ambulance, “so he’s moving on up,” he added. “Plus he has a full time job and the most important part is family.”
Andrea Collington (centre) was awarded the BC EHS Paramedic of the Year.
From the BC Emergency Health Services (BC EHS) Andrea Collington was unanimously chosen by her peers for the award. “Andrea has worked with BC EHS for over 15 years. And most of her time, if not all of her time, has been at the Osoyoos station. Andrea is very devoted to her station. Andrea is a great colleague, a great friend and she’s a wonderful person.”
The Osoyoos Fire Rescue this year declined to choose one member for the award with Fire Chief Corey Kortmeyer saying that with what the community and first responders went through this past year with the wildfires they could not pick one single firefighter saying, “the whole department went above and beyond the call of duty.”
As such Rotary chose to honour the entire Osoyoos Fire Department for the award. Deputy Chief Ryan McCaskill accepted the award on behalf of the department saying: “It was a crazy year for all services we couldn’t pick one person because we had the entire valley backing us up and we backed them up.
“That is what we do in this service and we wouldn’t be standing here today in this scenario without all of you backing us up because things could have gone a lot worse. Things went awesome because we worked as a team. This is for every member of our department, thank you all, we appreciate every one of you.”
Gerry Moran (centre) with AMFD Chief Urs Grob (left) and Larry Stone (right), was awarded Anarchist Mountain Fire Department Firefighter of the Year.
The final award went to the newest award member of the group, the Anarchist Mountain Fire Department (AMFD). “We had never included them in this group but last year we sat down as the Rotary committee and asked ourselves ‘Why haven’t we included Anarchist in the group before?’ Whenever we have a problem they are the first ones to jump in and help us,” Stone said adding that Anarchist residents all have Osoyoos addresses.
“So this year we have the honour and privilege of including Anarchist Mountain,” he said, inviting AMFD Chief Urs Grob to the stage. The choice of firefighter of the year went to Gerry Moran Program Lead for the department’s Wildfire Prevention (FireSmart) Program.
“Gerry has been with the department for eight years and he’s the lead of the FireSmart Program and he is a genius, if something breaks he can fix it,” says Grob. Moran also played a crucial role in securing grant funding (one of 11 Canadian communities awarded $15,000) which with matching funding brought total funds to $45,000 for a FireSmart sprinkler protection system aimed at fires coming across the border from the US to the rugged southern side of Anarchist.
On that particular topic Grob related an amusing anecdote from this summer. “There’s a small story when you had the fire starting down here,” he said about the Eagle Bluff wildfire, “We were practicing up on the mountain – and I really couldn’t talk about this because it seemed to be a little bit odd – our scenario was that there is a fire coming from the States and we have to fight it,” he said.
The AMFD proceeded to game out the scenario which saw the deployment of the 1.5 km long sprinkler line, “and everything worked, we cleaned up and then the scenario really happened. The serious fire came from the States, so we decided to be quiet about it,” he chuckled as they feared that some might view the whole thing as suspicious.
