CENTRAL MANITOULIN—Trucks, tankers, hoses and turnout gear have been transferred to the new $1.1 million Mindemoya fire hall and the crews will be operating out of it going forward, but the folks will have to wait until May for the grand opening.
“We have had it open for quite a while now actually,” said Central Manitoulin Mayor Richard Stephens, “not officially, but it is operational.”
The new hall is financed by the municipality through a combination of loan and reserves. Although the municipality had submitted funding requests, they did not come through leaving the town to take out a $900,000 loan.
“We had to have it,” noted Mayor Stephens. The new facility is fully compliant with all the specifications for a modern rural community fire department. Although the new fire hall will be replacing the Mindemoya fire hall and is considerably larger, the municipality has no plans currently to close any of the other fire halls in the municipality.
“We have four of them,” noted Mayor Stephens. “But closing any of them? Not at this point.”
The new facility, located on Highway 542, was constructed by Sheppard Custom Building Limited close to the Mindemoya Hotel. It has a 46-foot by 105-foot footprint for a total of 4,830 square feet and is a pre-engineered steel building frame and meets post-disaster specifications.
The building features a large meeting room/training area, two storage rooms and a fire chief’s office and has a number of important upgrades including electric doors, infrared heating, a truck exhaust system—and as an added bonus, the building utilizes LED lighting and is dark sky compliant.
Employee safety is a key feature of the building, so in addition to the truck exhaust feature, the building has an emergency decontamination shower, and adult change room and handicapped accessible washrooms automatic gas detection and ventilation and propane hot water on demand.
The Campbell firefighters have stepped up and fundraised for a television, DVD player and wi-fi to facilitate training.
