New fire hall a busy place
The city’s newest fire hall is already seeing plenty of action.
At the grand opening of station No. 7 on Monday, Oct. 1, Kamloops Fire Rescue Chief Neill Moroz said the call volume for the Aberdeen hall is higher than originally projected when operations began in March.
“We’ll be keeping them busy,” Moroz said, noting he expects the station to handle annually about 400 calls as first responders and approximately 200 more as back-up.
Before the hall opened in March, calls to the Aberdeen area were covered by the department’s main firehall at Summit and Arrowstone drives in Sahali.
“That was a problem. It was such a long response time for this area that we had to shorten those response times,” Moroz said.
The station has a full-time staff of four and houses other equipment that isn’t needed for run-of-the-mill calls, such as hazardous-material gear and wildland trucks.
It also serves as a year-round training hub for the entire fire service and includes a training tower for practising rope rescues, high- and low-rise firefighting and other scenarios.
“There’s just so many things you can do with this facility,” Moroz said.
“We thought, ‘Here’s a space. What can we do to make some training function in this place?’ So, every room in this placed is designed with that in mind.”
Firefighters from other stations will cycle through the Aberdeen facility throughout the year.
“Every firefighter in the city will train out of this hall at some point,” Moroz said.
A public open house with tours of the new fire hall is planned for later this month.
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