New facilities shine in C.B.S.
Conception Bay South opened the doors of three new facilities on Friday for tours.
The C.B.S. arena, firehall and town hall are facilities the municipality has built with the future in mind, knowing full well that investment in such facilities means getting it as right as they can. These buildings have to serve a growing and changing community and will have to do so for a long time.
The C.B.S. firehall is very green — perhaps not in colour, but in environmental attitude. The building is geothermal, with infloor heating. The bay doors and surrounding sidewalks are even heated for ice-control. There’s only cold water for washing down the trucks, to conserve energy.
The building is made for efficiency, not just on an economic and environmental level, but to help the workers get their job done as quickly and as safely as possible.
A filling station for the air tanks draws the air from outside so there’s no cross contamination from the air in the hall. Outside, there’s a 350,000-watt generator that can handle the hall if the power goes out.
A room for a larger emergency has areas for other first responders such as the RNC or paramedics to set up shop and be able to tap into their own specific radio frequencies.
There are also new dorms for both men and women, with lockers for personal use and bunker lockers for the firefighting gear. All lockers are vented. A smoke-filled suit won’t contaminate a locker.
You won’t find a stair in the place. Graded floors flow throughout to ensure nobody trips during a 3 a.m. emergency.
The old firehall could have actually fit inside the bay of the new one.
“Oh, this is certainly much more functional,” acting fire chief John Heffernan said Friday.
The former hall was about 40 years old and all wooden.
“It was essentially an old barn
“It was essentially an old barn that was turned into a garage and was basically added on and added on.” John Heffernan, acting fire chief, C.B.S.
that was turned into a garage and was basically added on and added on,” Heffernan says.
While women as firefighters have been in the news lately, women have always been a part of the C.B.S. firefighting operation.
“I’ll be here 26 years this month and, actually, females joined with me here 26 years ago. So we’ve had females here the whole way through,” said Heffernan.
The new town hall has also gone for efficiency, again not just with energy and environmentalism, but with how it helps the town function.
“We’ve got all of our main divisions under one roof now because we were spread out throughout the community,” chief administrative officer Dan Noseworthy said.
“We tried to make the place as multifunctional as we could.”
As well as bringing all the working parts of the town under one roof, another goal of the building is for it to work well for the residents of the community and give them a working area where they can handle any business with the town they might have.
One man who was clearly impressed on Friday as he walked through was Aubrey Dawe, who was mayor of C.B.S. from 1981 to 1985.
“Oh my god,” he said when asked how the community has changed.
“The size is one thing. The size of the community.”
Dawe, at the request of The Telegram, tried out the mayor’s chair in the new council chambers.
“Far from it,” he said with a laugh when asked if it compared to his old chambers.