I know that this topic has been touched upon before, but as it’s part of my portfolio, as chair of the public safety committee, I would like togive you some history of our fire department.
The first fire hall was built in the late 1920s and was a single bay wooden structure. It was located down from the Element, across fromWest’s Department store where there is currently a vacant lot. In the late 1950s it relocated to where we now have our city hall. The reasonfor the relocation was to accommodate larger fire trucks.
In 1974 the Village of Castlegar and the Village of Kinnaird amalgamated to become the City of Castlegar. Once the amalgamation wascompleted, the city had two fire halls. Number One Hall was located next to city hall and Number Two Hall was located next to what is nowAndrew Sheret.
In 1999 the new fire hall was built where it currently is today. This building is 14,000 sq. ft. and includes an administration and dispatcharea, kitchen/lounge facility, a training room/emergency operations centre. It also includes a weight room, training tower and workshop.For those emergency preparedness incidents it has an emergency power generator.
Before 1981 the City of Castlegar Fire Department consisted of all volunteers. These volunteers were called to a fire call by sirens located onthe top of the fire halls. These sirens could be heard all through Castlegar and volunteer responders would arrive at the station. If southCastlegar had a fire, Hall Number Two’s siren would activate, and vice versa for the north end. These sirens would not stop until there wereenough volunteers to fight the fire and man the trucks. Many people would say these sirens were eerie sounding and some compared themto air raid sirens from the World Wars.
In 1981 the City of Castlegar got its first full-time fire chief who was responsible for all volunteer firemen. In 1982 the city implemented apager system, eliminating those eerie sounding sirens.
As the City of Castlegar has continued to grow, we now have a full-time fire chief, two full-time deputy chiefs and an all-volunteer crew offiremen.
The city currently has three pumper trucks and a rescue vehicle. Some information you might find interesting is that fire trucks only have a30-year life span for a municipality. As this is the case and one of our trucks is approaching its life expectancy, the city has purchased anew state-of-the-art ladder truck.
To finish, I would like to thank our past and present men and women fire crews for their dedication to serving the city of Castlegar.
