Coaldale fire hall expansion approved
Coaldale Town Council voted unanimously at its Sept. 4 meeting to approve the community’s new firehall expansion and renovation project.
The $3.3-million project will now go to tender, and when completed will double the size of the existing firehall and modernize it to meet the community’s needs of the future, said Mayor Kim Craig.
“Coaldale and the County of Lethbridge are growing, and we hope that will continue,” said Craig. “If that hope is realized, there will be more and more fire response and better services for the citizens of Coaldale and the residents of Lethbridge County we serve.”
The upgrades should also allow Coaldale’s local volunteer fire service members to access better equipment to do their jobs even more effectively, Craig said.
“We are very committed to making sure the equipment our volunteer (firefighters) have is very good equipment. And, in my mind, the new firehall is a way of acknowledging their valuable contribution to our community.”
Craig said the project is the culmination of a long-term plan by he and his councillors, and he was excited to see the project reach the shovel-ready phase in the next few months.
“It’s very good news to be able to move forward on this project,” stated Craig. “Our old hall has more or less served its purpose. It has been around for several decades now, and it really doesn’t meet code anymore and for a long time there has been no air exchange for the trucks and no ability for our firefighters to have industrial washers and dryers to wash their gear and make sure they are in a good environment. A lot of the Occupational Health and Safety discussions drove us toward building a new hall.”
One of the main attractions of the expanded firehall, according to Craig, is it will have bigger bay space to better house its equipment.
“We are modernizing our fleet,” Craig added. “In 2019, we will be in receipt of an elevated master streamer, a ladder truck, and it won’t fit in the existing building.”
The Coaldale firehall upgrades should be completed in 2019 if all goes according to schedule.
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