Renovating in Aylmer: consider all the elements

Certain rural residents face high home insurance costs 

 

Laurent Robillard-Cardinal 

Home insurance costs for certain rural residents in North Aylmer are considerably more expensive than the average. This is one disadvantage of living in the countryside. “There are no fire halls in Gatineau’s rural area. The city was supposed to move the Plateau fire hall further west, as the area is developing, but nothing has happened so far. The problem is that our home insurance costs are extremely high because we are far from a fire hall,” said Raymond Huneault, from Vignoble du Clos Baillie. The home is also roughly 3 km away from a fire hydrant. “Everyone around here pays a fortune in home insurance. It’s great that they are placing address posts (to help emergency services identify residences), but the city should start thinking about moving or building a fire hall in the rural area, it would be even safer,” added Huneault.

 

When asked whether all parts of Gatineau’s rural areas were covered in the city’s Fire Safety Cover Plan, to which Mr. Huneault contributed over $100, the city told the Bulletin the municipal fire plan complied with ministerial requirements for fire safety. “The intervention force in the Fire Safety Cover Plan is calculated by the distance a certain number of firefighters can cover in a given time and not the distance between a residence and a fire hall. For urban areas, the intervention force is composed of 10 firefighters and the team must be able to reach a location within 10 minutes or less, while in rural areas, the task force is also composed of 10 firefighters and must be able to reach a location in 15 minutes or less,” explained a city spokesperson.

 

The closest Gatineau fire hall to Mr Huneault’s home, at 490 Baillie Road, is the Roland Guertin fire hall at 425 Wilfrid-Lavigne Boulevard, roughly 10 kilometers (km) away. According to calculations provided by Google Maps, it takes 15 minutes to travel between the fire hall and the North Aylmer winery. Thankfully, a Chelsea fire hall, at 161 Mountain Road, is only about 5 km away while a Municipality of Pontiac fire hall, at 2024, Highway 148, is less than 4 km away. Gatineau’s fire department does have agreements with neighboring municipalities, but the city argued the service provided by Gatineau’s firefighters is typically quicker. “Despite the possibility of a shorter distance between a home and another municipality’s fire hall, the traveling time of Gatineau firefighters is often higher because staff [from neighbouring municipalities] are generally absent from [rural] fire halls. In Gatineau, because firefighters are always present at fire stations, it can greatly reduce the response time,” explained a city spokesperson.