A Lewis County Fire District 3 building is seen Tuesday afternoon located at 238 Mossyrock Road East.
A Lewis County Fire District 3 building is seen Tuesday afternoon located at 137 E. Main in Mossyrock.
A Lewis County Fire District 3 garage is seen Tuesday afternoon located at 137 E. Main in Mossyrock.
Lewis County is bolstering efforts to complete construction of the fire station in Mossyrock, sponsoring a grant application for $650,000 to seek federal funds for the project.
“I appreciate the support that we’ve been getting from the county on this,” said Fire District 3 Chief Doug Fosburg. “Phase 2 of this will provide sleeping quarters, a training area and a community room with a kitchen to support the (emergency) shelter.”
In 2016, voters approved a bond to fund construction of a new District 3 fire station, bringing in $1.4 million for the new building. Rising construction costs, however, meant that money was insufficient to complete the whole project, so the work was divided into phases.
Phase 1, completed last fall, built a 5,000 square-foot structure to house the district’s truck bays, storage area and emergency shelter space. Now, Lewis County is poised to sponsor the district’s push for federal money for Phase 2, which will add a 3,500 square-foot building with the station’s sleeping quarters, kitchen, training area and community room.
“It’s a critical piece of infrastructure for the county,” said Public Works director Josh Metcalf. “They serve a wide variety and a large geographical area. As we prepare for other natural disasters, that ultimate facility is slated as an emergency shelter. It’s in the middle of the county, so it’s a good cause and a good thing for us to get behind. Hopefully, we never have to use it, but if we ever do, it will be a critical piece of our emergency services.”
Lewis County is set to approve an application on the district’s behalf for a Community Development Block Grant, administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Metcalf said officials first made sure no county departments had projects that qualified for the grant, before throwing the county’s backing to District 3’s project.
“It fits the county’s needs, and because it’s part of an existing project, it makes a lot of sense,” he said. “A lot of the groundwork is done, now it’s just the infrastructure.”
Both Metcalf and Fosburg said they’re optimistic that the grant request will be approved, having heard encouraging reports from a grant writer brought on for the project.
Fire District 3 covers 49 square miles near Mossyrock, with 2,350 year-round residents — a number that balloons to 7,300 during the summer. The district receives about 280 fire and medical calls annually.
Fosburg said the district has been working on the project since 2012, overcoming two failed bond measures in the process. The district’s original station had been built in the 1940s. At present, the storage areas built in Phase 1 are doubling as the district’s office space.
The facility built during the first part of the project, Fosburg said, will be able to serve an emergency shelter for the community, but finishing the adjacent structure will offer more services.
“We can move our vehicles out and put over 500 people in there during a disaster,” he said. “We’ll have our 24-hour generator, we’ll be able to provide all of that. What we can’t provide right now, we don’t have our kitchen facilities or our sleeping quarters for our firefighters to man the station. With the training room that can be used as a community room, we’ll be able to bring in fire instructors and training sessions to us, rather than having to travel.”
The grant awards will be announced in September, and Fosburg said he’s hoping to go out for bid on the project next January.
“It’s been a long time coming,” he said.
