BELGRADE — Just off Frank Road in Belgrade, construction is underway for the new Central Valley Fire District station.
To understand why the new building is needed, I visited the current fleet maintenance facility.
“Our current facility, we can only get one truck in here at a time to work on,” said Central Valley Fire Fleet Manager Rich Whitaker. “It’ll be nice to have the bigger facility so both of us can be working on separate trucks at the same time.”
See the construction of Central Valley Fire District's new Belgrade station which will house 8 fire trucks and improve emergency response times
Whitaker explained that even maneuvering around the equipment can be a challenge.
“You know, as you can see, this truck barely fits in here,” he said. “It’s hard to get underneath the trucks; they’re usually fairly low to the ground.”
Whitaker said the new station's maintenance area will feature 20-foot sidewalls, and it will have the ability to hold up to eight firefighting apparatuses at a time.
Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Hurley said that more space means faster repairs and faster response times.
“To have multiple apparatuses in here and mechanics working on it, we can get that turnaround faster,” Hurley said.
Central Valley Fire also sees the new facility as an improved way to support Belgrade and the Greater Gallatin Valley.
“With the larger shop, and the way we’re being community partners with doing the work on the apparatuses, that’s generating revenue for our community,” Hurley explained.
“So, what we’re trying to do is be creative and innovative to generate revenue, so we can hire more firefighters to help with our response times.”
The new building is set to start going up on December 1st and be completed by April 1st.
“It’s gonna help us,” said the Deputy Fire Chief. “To help increase our staffing levels, to reduce our response time, and also meet the needs of our community partners and our regional partners.”
