The Dawson City fire chief has a few things to say about the situation with the town’s paramedic services.

Mike Masseray isn’t a happy camper that his staff are being called upon to carry out paramedic work for the town due to a shortage of paramedics.

Masseray told the Star Wednesday that there are only two full-time paramedics in town – and the volunteers with the service have dwindled to the point of being unavailable.

That’s left the fire department and the RCMP being pressed into service to fill the gap for community needs.

That doesn’t sit well with the chief – who bluntly says his people didn’t sign up to be paramedics.

“They can’t rely on us to do their work for them. This not a community responsibility,” he said.

Masseray says the problem has developed slowly over the last two years, as the numbers of volunteers covering off-hours for the paramedic services have declined.

The two full-time staff are offering the services during regular business hours, approximately 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. – and then things become more interesting.

The chief suggested many of the volunteers have left the department because of inadequate opportunities for training and other problems.

For Masseray, the difficulty is that while the fire department is being expected to act as fill-ins, it is often not being told when it should be on-call, which is unacceptable.

“They’re not willing to tell us when they are short-staffed,” he said. “We don’t have the equipment or proper training to do do their job.”

Masseray says he worries about the potential liability that goes with the situation.

“That kind of thing doesn’t stand up in court so well anymore,” he pointed out.

Surprisingly, Yukon government officials told him that a 24/7 ambulance service isn’t mandated by the government for Dawson City or Watson Lake – two of the largest communities in the Yukon.

Whitehorse is the only municipality with that luxury, Masseray said.

“I’m not impressed at all with this,” he said.

“We need to have someone here 24/7. They have to do something.”

He speculated that it will take some deaths from medical-related problems for the government to finally act on the situation.

“They need to recruit and get people here,” Masseray said.