It was a manageable week for the Okotoks Fire Department, responding to less than average calls.

Fire Chief Ken Thevenot says they didn't have to fight a single fire in that time frame.

"We had a total of 16 responses, 12 being medical, one being a public hazard, one alarm system activation and we attended two motor vehicle accidents," he says. "The numbers are a little bit lower than normal we usually run around 20 calls, which gives us a total responses year to date of 964."

Despite the total number of calls being up from last year, Thevenot has found an interesting trend in calls the past few months.

"We haven't had a lot of responses due to the snow," he says. "Actually in the last number of months our responses have been down, at one point we were 107 calls ahead from last year to the particular date which was around June and July so it is a good thing our responses are coming down."

Thevenot says the colder temperatures become a common theme these days, he advises everyone to avoid storm retention ponds at all times as they can be deceiving to walk or potentially skate on.

"There was frost before and there could have been a crust and now we have that heavy snow on there, so with this snow it doesn't particularly make good ice, we haven't had some good freezes."

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