Kaela Tennant and her son Jack, 11, sighed in relief when Saskatoon city council voted 6-5 on Monday to restrict residents to burning in backyard fire pits between the hours of 2 p.m. and 11 p.m. CT.
Jack suffers from asthma and respiratory issues.
“My lungs, they start to close up and I can’t breathe,” said Jack, who said he has been hospitalized numerous times because of neighbours’ burning.
While his bedtime is 9 p.m., Kaela said the new bylaw is still appreciated.
“At least we can go home and know that by 11 p.m. we can open up our windows. By 11 p.m., we know when it’s going to end and it’s not going to be going until four o’clock in the morning.”
Tennent considers the new bylaw, which is effective immediately, a win but Ward 1 Coun. Darren Hill did not vote in favour and calls the bylaw unnecessary.
“This bylaw is not our best work,” Hill said.
“You can burn your chimney, you can burn your fireplace if you’ve built that, you can burn your wood burning smoker. We didn’t do the proper work and background of this issue. We just simply pulled an arbitrary time frame out of thin air and introduced that.”
Hill said he’s concerned the bylaw will create more work for the Saskatoon Fire Department, which could result in a longer response time to a residential or commercial fire.
” Hill’s argument that this is going to cause … even more resources from the fire department is in fact false because instead of people having to make those repeated calls relying solely on the nuisance bylaw … it can be chronic,” said Tennent, who described burning in her block of the Mayfair neighbourhood as constant.
While the debate is still fiery, the decision is complete. The fire department will begin enforcing this complaint driven bylaw immediately.