Sherbrooke Record e-Edition

Bedford works toward new fire station

By Ruby Pratka Local Journalism Initiative

Bedford fire chief Ralph Gilman can almost see the firehouse that he and his 34-member squad have been waiting for for nearly a decade.

In late January, the town of Bedford’s offer to buy land along route 235 to build the new firehouse was accepted and an initial meeting with an architect took place, director general Richard Joyal told La Voix de l’est, adding that an application for a provincial subsidy to pay for some of the building costs “should be submitted in the next three months.” The cost of the building and the exact timeline of the project are still to be determined.

The current fire station, housed in a former car dealership, serves Bedford and three surrounding municipalities – Bedford Canton, Saint-ignace-destanbridge and Stanbridge Station. The Bedford fire station also houses the regional fire academy, now a single classroom. Providing student firefighters a quiet room to write exams is just one reason Gilman is eager for more space.

“We need washing machines to wash the equipment,” he told the BCN. “No one at the town is saying ‘We can’t fund washing machines’ – if we had a washing machine, we would have nowhere to put it.” The station also lacks its own showers. “When you come in from a fire, it’s poisonous – you need to wash once with your equipment on and once with it off, and then put the equipment in the washing machine.” Gilman also said the station’s air compressor was wearing out and difficult to replace for space reasons, and the station’s ten-foot-high garage can’t house taller modern fire trucks or the equipment needed to wash them.

Gilman and his team are forced to

come up with expensive and cumbersome workarounds – firefighters’ uniforms are washed by a private company offsite, and larger vehicles are kept in a garage rented from the town of Bedford Canton. Trucks are washed outside. “In summer, that’s not so bad, but if there was a fire today, we’d need to wash [the trucks] outside in 40 below,” said Gilman.

In Gilman’s more than 40 years with the fire service, the number of calls received in a normal year has risen from ten to more than 200. He attributes that to population growth and the changing nature of calls. “When I started, no one called unless their house was burning down,” he said. “Now we get calls when people’s alarms go off, when there’s a cat up a tree or when someone needs to pump out a basement; it’s hard to say no to our neighbours.”

Like his counterparts elsewhere in the region, Gilman also routinely sends crews to assist at emergencies around the MRC. “Having a new fire station is going to help make our lives easier, but it will also help other towns,” he said. Bedford, Bedford Canton, Stanbridge Station and Saint-ignace-de-stanbridge recently reached a 15-year fire service sharing agreement – a precondition for building the new facility.

Gilman emphasized that the wait for the new facility was far from over – once the plans are completed and the financing plan established, the town will need to launch a call for tenders and find a contractor before any actual building can take place. “I wish I could say we’ll break ground next week, but there are a lot of steps left,” he said.

Joyal was unavailable to comment to the BCN at press time.

BROME COUNTY NEWS

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2023-02-07T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-02-07T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://sherbrookerecord.pressreader.com/article/281771338346246

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