By now, many Elk Citians and Beckham County residents know that the dirt work being done near the intersection of Washington and Broadway in Elk City is in preparation for the Elk City Fire Department firehouse being built.
Elk City voters approved extending a sales tax set to expire to construct the new fire department headquarters.
ECFD Public Information Officer Brian Pierce says the new facility was greatly needed. ECFD Chief Kyle Chervenka agrees.
“It will be good to help get the information out there since people can now see the dirt work being done,” Chervenka said.
The ECFD is currently headquartered in its original building, which is only a block south of the new building.
“It is going to be nice for us,” Pierce stated. “It is going to have a nice ‘bib space,’ which is what we call the concrete area that will allow us to clean our trucks out and to clean the station fully. We cannot do that right now because we don’t have anywhere to take all of the trucks simultaneously. The main entry will be on the south side of this lot, which the city owns. We are going to have a large footprint on the lot. Our living area for our 24-hour shifts will be on the north side of the building. Expanding that will let us grow like we need to in order to take care of our growing demand.”
According to Pierce and Chervenka, the problem is that the current department building has nowhere left to add more sleeping areas for an enlarged crew.
“When this building was built, I think they were working with a 2-man crew,” Chervenka explained. “Then, it grew to four. We are now at eight, but we need to be able to grow to ten. We ran with an eight-person crew when we had 1,500 calls per year. We now have about 3,000 calls a year.”
“Right now, we only have two showers for eight people,” Pierce added. “When we have been out on a wildfire, we will have several people needing to get all that washed off quickly because we are all still on-call. On high-fire days, we may just be getting in from a call when another comes in.”
Another benefit will be having all the ECFD offices in one building.
“Right now, my office is across the street in our building, which is the public shelter and also our education room,” Pierce said. “That sometimes is isolating. We will have room to be in the same building now, making communication easier.”
The project is expected to take 12 to 18 months.
