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St. Albert officially opens Fire Hall #1 at new location

The new station includes individual dorm rooms and an emergency operations centre on the second floor.

Firefighters won’t be sliding down poles at St. Albert’s new Fire Hall #1 location at 20 Gate Ave. — instead, the building boasts several improvements on its earlier counterpart. 

The City of St. Albert held an official opening for the new fire building June 8. Open to invited guests only, the event included the retiring of the Canadian flag carried over from the old station #1 building at 18 Sir Winston Churchill Ave, as well as speeches from leaders in St. Albert’s fire department, Mayor Cathy Heron, and provincial Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver.

The Province of Alberta chipped in $11 million in grant funding towards the $14-million project as part of the Municipal Sustainability Initiative Program. The federal government also supported the project with $778,000 from the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program. 

Greg Harvey, president of St. Albert Fire Services Local 2130, told attendees the station has been designed with extensive input from the union membership, highlighting the modern gym and ventilated gear room. 

“All of these little things go a long way to improve the health and well-being of our membership, which is priority one so we can serve our citizens as best we can,” Harvey said. 

The new building includes 16 doors, four bays, and on-site power generation.

Darrel Bliss, deputy logistics chief, said because the firefighters occupy the main floor of the building, there’s no need to have poles to get quickly from one floor to the next. 

“There’s been some controversy over the years with poles,” Bliss said, noting that sliding down the poles could lead to injuries. 

Personal-space improvements for fire staff include two gender-neutral change-rooms, and 16 individual dorm rooms — two of which are connected to offices. Bliss said the old fire hall had one large space for sleeping, at one time complete with bunk-beds. 

“We’ve come a long way,” Bliss said. 

Emergency operations centre

The second floor of the building houses an emergency operations centre (EOC), space the city can use to co-ordinate its response to crises as they arise.

St. Albert has activated the EOC in establishing the city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as earlier in response to the Wood Buffalo fires. 

The new EOC includes board rooms with cameras, screens, and ceiling microphones for communicating, with the largest room holding space for up to 44 people. Several of the rooms featured whiteboard walls in their design. 

“You can write on the walls,” said Percy Janke, St. Albert’s director of emergency management. “In terms of an activation, all those inches of space will get utilized.”

Old with the new

While the old station #1 officially closed May 2, Bliss said pieces of it will live on in the new building. 

The retired flag, for example, will be placed in a shadow box for display on one of the walls. Bliss said he has plans to move over the letters and numbers from the address of the old building for a similar display in the lounge area. Other equipment odds and ends have also been kept from the old building, such as a large sink for washing self-contained breathing apparatus masks. 

While addressing attendees, Harvey said that since the building has been open, every apparatus within it has responded to numerous fires, some just around the corner from the station. 

“This is the right place for the station and the right equipment is here,” Harvey said. “This station allows us to be with our second family while we're away from our first family."

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