The Fire Department continues to be inundated with outdoor fire calls.
According to the City of North Bay, there have been more than 25 outdoor fire reports to North Bay Fire and Emergency Services this month.
Greg Saunders, Deputy Fire Chief, says many of those come from homeless encampments.
"The truth is our call volumes are way up," he said.
"I came off the floor about 10 years ago, and our call volumes are up about 30 per cent in those 10 years.
"With limited resources, what those calls do is tie us up. If we're managing an outdoor fire, then the truck's not readily available to respond to a house fire or a medical emergency in the community," continued Saunders.
"So it's really, really focusing on proper use of resource allocations and trying to educate the community. Outdoor burning is regulated by a bylaw, and anything that's outside of that bylaw is not allowed, and we are obliged to extinguish that fire and manage that incident."
With the weather cooling down, Saunders is concerned about the number of outdoor fires increasing. It was even a problem during a very warm summer in North Bay.
The North Bay Fire Department says from a time frame from late June 18 to July 23, North Bay crews went to 19 calls that Deputy Chief Greg Saunders says "were the result of unhoused persons burning contrary to the City By-Law and these fires were extinguished by our firefighters."
During that time, the City of North Bay had 39 outdoor fire calls.