Thousands of people up and down the South Shore now benefit from what began as one man’s hobby.

Close to ten years ago Evan Dahl began posting the location and types of emergencies first responders were being called out to support on his Dahl Dispatch Facebook page.

Since then, it has built a following of 28,000 people. Dahl said he feels like he’s performing a community service.

“I enjoy giving the community the basic info of what’s going on. I can’t always give too much info at the time but I try to give them enough so that when they hear sirens they at least have an idea of what’s going on,” said Dahl.

He focuses his efforts on reporting fire calls from across Queens and Lunenburg counties.

Dahl began the page while he was still in high school and since then he has taken a deeper dive into the world of first responders.

Following in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and uncles, Dahl is currently a volunteer firefighter with the Dayspring fire service.

His day job is spent answering fire calls for Lunenburg and Shelburne counties at Scotia Business Centre.

Keeping the public informed and staying focused at work can be a tricky balance to strike sometimes.

“If it’s busy at work, my hobby has to wait until I get off, I get home,” said Dahl. “I try to balance it and as much as it’s related, I try to keep it separate.”

Many of Dahl’s followers are people in the media who rely on his updates to tip them off to events as they are happening.

“I really like that and usually if there’s a big call on the go they will turn to me for info or that kind of thing. So it’s nice to be able to help them out as well,” said Dahl.

He invests a great deal of time into keeping his page up to date and, recently, launched a campaign to try and offset some of his costs.

He set up a “buy me a pizza” fundraiser where anyone who felt like contributing to his work could send him a suggested five-dollar donation. Dahl got the idea from a similar site being run out of metro.

‘There’s a page for Halifax fire calls and he posted this, buy me a coffee site. Basically, you go on and you donate, I think his amount was three or four dollars, enough to buy him a coffee,” said Dahl. “I don’t drink coffee so I put my little spin on it so I put buy me a pizza.”

Dahl raised around $160 but he is not out to make money on the page. He said he does need to update his equipment every few years as technology changes, and may look at doing a yearly fundraising drive.

To follow Dahl’s work, go to Dahl Dispatch on Facebook.

Reported by Ed Halverson 
E-mail: edhalversonnews@gmail.com
Twitter: @edwardhalverson