MONTREAL \u2014 The Montreal Fire Department says it responded to more outdoor fires in 2025 than in the year before, largely because there are more homeless encampments in the city.<\/p>\n
Department Director Richard Liebmann presented the department’s 2025 activity report in a public assembly on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n
He said encampment fires are often minor and that the department, in partnership with the municipal government and police force, are working within the encampments to curb them.<\/p>\n
He also said fire fighters are regularly responding to climate-related emergencies.<\/p>\n
The department had to activate its disaster prevention and emergency response plan 14 times in 2025.<\/p>\n
Liebmann said 60 per cent of last year’s fire department responses were first-responder calls such as medical emergencies.<\/p>\n
That’s a jump from last year, which Liebmann attributed to the city’s aging population and an increase in chronic diseases.<\/p>\n
In 2025, the Montreal Fire Department added 11 firefighters and five staff members to its technical services division to carry out the decontamination of firefighting gear and personal protective equipment.<\/p>\n
“As you know, we face major challenges with cancer prevention, and we’re devoting a great deal of energy and resources to it,” Liebmann said.<\/p>\n
In 2022, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified firefighting as a recognized human carcinogen.<\/p>\n
Health Canada’s website says firefighters have a nine per cent higher risk of being diagnosed with cancer and a 14 per cent higher risk of dying from cancer than the general public.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 4, 2026.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 The Montreal Fire Department says it responded to more outdoor fires in 2025 than in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":883232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[975,49,48,306489,2338,306490,944,306488],"class_list":["post-883231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-975","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-liebmann","tag-montreal","tag-ryan-remiorz","tag-the-canadian-press","tag-the-montreal-fire-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}