Town of Niverville residents are now allowed to enjoy fire pits on their driveway. Prior to the consolidation of fire by-laws, this was not allowed.

At last week’s Council meeting, 23 additions, amendments, and the removal of duplicate or unnecessary fire related bylaws were unanimously approved.

The Director of Communications and Public Relations for the town, Cyrus Reimer, says the biggest reason for the consolidation of the fire by-laws is because, “It makes information regarding fire and fire adjacent things more accessible instead of having to look through multiple different by-laws, they are now centralized in one place so residents can easily find information on firework permits or burning bans or what the Niverville Fire & Emergency Services staff and volunteers do.”

Reimer adds these updates also bring Niverville’s by-laws more in line with other urban municipalities in the southeast.

Reimer says, this project has been in the works for a while.

"Town staff and town counselors have been hard at work to make sure that we dig in depth into the amendments and work through our different by-laws. It took quite some time, just walking through how we want to consolidate this, or what amendments do we want to make, what do we want to add, what do we want to remove. We’ve been working alongside our elected officials and our fire chief and our planning and administration just trying to figure out how best we can put this by-law together.”

The three by-laws were: # 650-07 – The Fire Prevention By-law; #651-07 The Fireworks Regulation By-law; #796-18 Ability to implement a Niverville Burning Ban By-law are now all under By-law #864-24.

“Consolidating these three by-laws together will definitely help the citizens in Niverville.”

Another change to note is the ability to sell fireworks within town limits, which Reimer clarifies, “what we've done with this is we've made it easier to sell fireworks in town. For example, permits for sale and distribution are only required if you meet the threshold of having more than a thousand kilograms of low-hazard fireworks, or if you store or distribute high-hazard fireworks or pyrotechnic special effects. So, local distributors which most of our distributors are, only sell low-hazard fireworks, and now they also only need to post a notice by the sales display instead of handing out a notice of needing to be eighteen years or older with each purchase.”

Reimer adds this change will streamline the sale of fireworks and make it a lot more effective and easy to sell and distribute fireworks in a safe and responsible manner.

That said, Reimer notes that sky lanterns are not permitted to be released within the town of Niverville. “So, sky lanterns can be a very dangerous hazard, and we want to make sure that we keep the town safe, so we've decided that it's best that sky lanterns are prohibited.”

Reimer notes something that has changed in the fire by-law is the burning of yard waste on private property. “The burning of yard waste is something that tends to happen quite often in Manitoba especially in the springtime because there is a lot of yard waste, and because we’ve never really had anything about burn barrels in our fire by-law, so we decided to add a prohibition on burn barrels.”

Reimer adds besides the fact that burn barrels tend to smoke a lot, they also tend to smell pretty bad, “and with Niverville growing to the size it is, yards and lots are getting smaller, which means smoke from burn barrels tends to cross property lines much quicker, and much easier, and so to prevent it from causing a nuisance, to keep our by-laws in line with other urban centers, we've decided to put this prohibition on burn barrels.”

Reimer takes a moment to clarify fire pits and burn permits. "You (Niverville residents) don't need a fire permit for your fire pit. The by-law amendment regarding large bonfires, those are the ones we are asking you to apply for a permit. If you’re only lighting your fire pit, you don't need to worry about getting a permit.” 

He asks that if you have questions about whether you need a permit or not, to please contact the town office.

Niverville Fire & EMS

Reimer notes, this consolidated by-law now also includes Niverville Fire & EMS.  

“So, that basically means if you are looking for information on anything fire replated, whether that’s fire pits, fireworks, burning bans, and even Niverville Fire & EMS, it's all found in this by-law.” 

“So, I guess the big change is that we've defined exactly what they do. Like, what kind of services they provide, and so on, just so everybody knows that firefighters are there to help if you get into a car crash, they'll help extract you from your vehicle, which wasn't in our previous by-law.” 

“We want to make sure our residents know that you can count on Niverville Fire & EMS to do an aquatic rescue, and fire suppression, fire investigations, they’ll do public education and do fire inspections. We just wanted to include all of this in the by-law, so you (Niverville residents) would know what to expect from Niverville Fire & EMS.” 

Reimer says the hope in consolidating these three by-laws into one, “is that we're able to better provide these services to the people of Niverville and be able to help them find the information they need in a much more efficient manner.” 

“And you know, what it really boils down to is public safety. We want to make sure that people are safe. We want people to enjoy their summer, but we also want to make sure people are doing it in a safe and responsible manner.”

To read more about the by-law changes to the town of Niverville regarding fire, CLICK the link. 

To apply for a fire permit in the town of Niverville, CLICK the link. 

Find more details on the new consolidated town of Niverville by-law, CLICK the link.