As you know the roof of our fire hall was severely damaged during that windstorm late last year. Our insurance company has decided to dismantle the old firehall and replace it with a new building! Cartel Energy Services, an oilfield servicing company based here in Beiseker, allowed us to use their building to park our firefighting trucks during the very cold months. We would like to thank the Cartel folks for their help.
However, the Cartel folks have a business to run and our firetrucks were getting in the way. At the meeting last Monday, council decided to move the trucks from the Cartel shop.
But where would they go?
We investigated the possibility of parking them in the arena but that proved impractical because of the weight of a firetruck full of water! We certainly didn't want to damage the arena floor. We have decided to park the trucks back in the old firehall. Of course, the building cannot be used for storage of fire gear or fire department meetings, but the trucks themselves will be OK in there until we find a more suitable temporary home for them. Now the weather is warming up, we don't have to worry so much about the trucks' water tanks freezing. The arena folks have allowed us to store the smaller firefighting equipment in there over the next few months.
I would personally like to thank all those who have come together and are working so hard on the problem to find a suitable solution. Hopefully in the next few days we can find another temporary home for our firefighting vehicles - We certainly don't want to hold up the removal and replacement of the old firehall! Stay tuned on this one, too.
Here in Mission, BC a temporary three bay temporary fire hall was built to store the apparatus while a new main hall was built. The new Hall 1 was built complete with EOC, emergency radio room (manned by the local amateur radio club), offices and more. One the hall was done the temporary hall became available for use by various community groups.
ReplyDeleteHi Roy; An excellent solution. Here the Village of Beiseker wants to rejoin the Rocky View County's fire department. The desire is to build one firehall between here and Irricana, five miles south. That is sometime in the future. Both the County and the Village are having budget crunches so I fear that may be a few years off. Meantime, our insurance company claims that they will have our new firehall up and running within six weeks so our timeline is shorter than yours was! Hats off to Mission BC for that innovative solution!
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you Roy! Take care!