Chief pushes for new fire station

The head of Brandon’s fire and emergency services is pushing for a new station in the city’s southwest corner and wants it to be operational by 2031.

BFES Chief Terry Parlow said the city needs to plan for the future, and with a growing population, a third station — which would be about the size of the No. 2 station on 13th Street — is necessary to keep response times low.

The No. 3 station has been in the city’s capital plan for many years, but no drawings have been done and no costs have been determined.

“This project, at one time, was slated for 2022, 2024, 2026. That’s why this year we’re talking about it, to say we can no longer push it out,” Parlow said during an interview at his office in the No. 1 station on 19th Street North on Thursday.

“We can no longer say we can keep on doing what we’re doing with what we have. We need to actually be thinking ahead and planning ahead.”

Parlow pointed out that Brandon’s population is now estimated to be over 60,000 and the department’s call volume has increased substantially during the last few years.

“That growth is dictating the fact that we need to plan for the future.”

Parlow said the latest push started by reminding council about the new station during budget deliberations and now he wants to get the word out to the community. He said he’s “shooting for” construction to start in 2030.

The southwest corner of the city is the preferred location, he said, as that is where the city is seeing the most growth, with a new K-8 school and a lift station currently in the works.

“The southwest is obviously one of the farthest places for us to reach,” he said.

Response times in that part of the city generally fall within provincial standards, but waits can be longer when crews are already responding to another emergency.

The new station, like the No. 2 station at 1301 13th St., would have about four or five staff members. The No. 1 station serves as the fire and ambulance hub.

The city currently has six ambulances, two of which allow it to transfer people to Winnipeg as part of an agreement with Shared Health. BFES uses three ambulances for everyday purposes, and also has one spare.

By 2031, the service will need eight ambulances in total, Parlow said, adding that another ambulance will likely be needed before then, but “we just don’t have the capacity right now.”

The ambulances respond to about 95 per cent of BFES’s calls, Parlow added.

Mayor Jeff Fawcett said he couldn’t predict whether the new station would be built by 2031.

“It may happen a year or two after — who knows? — but in all likelihood, the way these things work, it likely will not be happening before 2031,” Fawcett said on Friday.

He said the city has many other large priorities in the forecast.

“It’s no different than needing additional schools. We need more schools just to continue with our growth,” he said.

“We need another fire hall at some point in the city. So it’s included in the capital plan and, you know, every year we’ll be assessing as we get closer to it, if it can get done.”

He said as the project gets closer, the city will start laying groundwork to see if other levels or government can provide financial assistance.

“This is a really preliminary thing.”

City manager Dave Wardrop said the city is also looking broadly at the infrastructure needs for the city’s growing southwest.

The new station, Wardrop said, is “in the very early stages — it’s in the conceptual planning phase right now.”

City administration still needs to find a location and property, determine the size of the building and find an appropriate funding source, he said. Expanding water, sewer, roads, transit services and policing also need to be considered.

Wardrop said it is possible that the station will be open by 2031, “but realistically, there’s a lot of competing demands and there’s also a lot of additional servicing that’s got to go in place between now and then.

“So, it’s part of the development. Whether it happens within five years, I think we have to see how things build out,” he said.

Parlow said he would like to see the station designed to blend into the surrounding neighbourhood.

Stations like the one that’s planned are “basically residential houses, but they have an extended garage (with) one or two or three bays on it, so that when you drive up to it, it would look like a house with just larger doors on it,” he said.

“When people are seeing it, they’re not quite sure what it is, except for the sign out front.”

Parlow added that sirens wouldn’t be blared in the neighbourhood.

The immediate priority now is to inform the community about the need for the new facility.

“It’s one of the things that probably we don’t think about a lot, but it’s one of the things that when you need it, you need to call 911, it needs to be there,” Parlow said.

“So what I’m trying to do is prepare our community for being there when we need them.”

» alambert@brandonsun.com