In 2016, Chehalis Fire Chief Ken Cardinale shows areas of the Chehalis Fire Department that were scheduled to be repaired in 2017. The department is now sharing space with Lewis County Fire District 6 and does not plan to move back into the historic structure.
The city of Chehalis plans to make finding a new home for its fire department “a priority for 2018,” citing concerns about its 90-year-old building’s suitability to be a modern fire station, City Manager Jill Anderson told The Chronicle this week.
“Because of the building’s historic nature, it wasn’t built to be a fire station. It wasn’t built to be an essential services building,” she said.
Fire Chief Ken Cardinale said the department is exploring two options — buying land and building a modern headquarters location, similar to Riverside Fire Authority’s station on Harrison Avenue, or building a small satellite station to hold them over in anticipation of a possible consolidation with another fire district, such as Lewis County Fire District 6.
“Right now we’re evaluating sites based on response time and also the location for neighboring agencies,” he said.
This time last year, the city of Chehalis was making plans to spend $50,000 to $75,000 in 2017 on upgrades to the historic building at 455 Northwest Park St., which started life in 1929 as the city’s police station on its ground floor and a hardwood-floored civic auditorium upstairs.
Last year, Chehalis Fire Chief Ken Cardinale said the building was fundamentally sound structurally but needed cosmetic upgrades and had damage from water leakage and old age.
In several areas, the building’s original lathe and plaster framework was showing through bare spots in walls and ceilings, windows leaked and suspected mold was growing on upper floors.
Work last year also included installing an AIRVAC system to pump carbon monoxide from truck exhaust out of the building.
“In looking at the long term need for the fire station, there’s some constraints to that location,” Anderson said. “It needs a lot of work.”
In addition to being too small and located on a narrow side street in Chehalis, the station doesn’t meet modern code requirements for emergency service providers, she said.
While last year Anderson said she saw the building continuing to serve as a fire station for the foreseeable future, this week she said the building should be preserved but with a different use.
“Hopefully it will continue to have a long and useful life,” she said.
The city doesn’t have a deadline for when it wants the fire department to be out of the building, she said.
In the past year, the Chehalis Fire Department and Fire District 6 in rural Chehalis have renewed a discussion about consolidating the fire services in an effort to save money and avoid duplication of work.
However, those discussions have been on hold for several months, Cardinale said. They’re scheduled to begin again in January.
The two districts currently train together and respond to many of the same calls, but are legally separate agencies.
Regardless of the outcome of those discussions, the fire department will explore multiple options for a new location.
The new station would need to be in a centralized location to provide easy access to both sides of Interstate 5 and facilitate mutual aid responses to neighboring fire districts.
“Where we pick the site is critical,” Cardinale said.
