Borough cuts ribbon on newest fire station

PALMER — The firefighters assigned to the Central Mat-Su Fire Department’s new, high tech station near Mat-Su Regional Medical Center seem to have an obsession: spiders.

Large arachnids adorn the workout room and the wall in the main stairwell in the firehouse off of Terrace Court and fronting on Fireweed Drive. There’s a huge banner with an eight-legged bug hanging in the cavernous equipment bay. One of the trucks has one, too. That’s because the firefighters here call themselves the “Spider Company.”

Why?

Turns out spiders are something they left behind to move into their new station. The old one, closer to the hospital in a temporary building, was infested with the creepy crawlers, said Jake Boothby, fire code enforcement officer for the department.

Tuesday, dignitaries met at Spider Company’s newly constructed home to tour the facility and talk about what it means for the borough and its largest, busiest fire department.

The need for a new station actually begins with a department-wide audit years ago. The auditors said the department needed something that could put firefighters high in the air above a tall building like the newly construction Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, said Central Mat-Su Fire Chief James Steele.

So, in 2009, then-state senator Lyda Green put money in the state budget to buy the department an aerial platform truck.

“That’s the only state grant we’ve ever gotten,” noted another speaker at the event, Ken Slausen, who chairs the board of supervisors for the fire service area Central Mat-Su serves, the Wasilla-Lakes Fire Service Area.

But the platform truck didn’t fully solve the problem.

“We started looking for somewhere to put that truck,” Steele said.

The station near the hospital — the one with the spiders — wasn’t big enough. So it was housed at the station on Seward Meridian Parkway, with plans to eventually move it closer to the hospital. Years of planning sessions and funding requests ensued. The result was the new Station 5-1.

“This is the largest public safety building in the borough,” Steele said.

It’s got 50,000 gallons of water in a cistern built into the foundation to feed both trucks and the building’s sprinklers. It’s got sleeping quarters, a gym and a kitchen. It’s got a notification system that includes video screens that will display information about where responders are heading and what type of emergency they’re heading to. It will provide permanent office space for the fire code compliance officers.

It also will house the restocking warehouse for the borough’s ambulances. The location is perfect — where better to restock than near the hospital, which is generally the endpoint for most ambulance calls? Steele said that in addition to supplies the station will have computerized training for medics, available 24-7.

“When they drive from Trapper Creek, that two-and-a-half hour drive, they can stop here and take that training,” Steele said.

Recounting an incident this Easter, during which his family dinner was interrupted by a fire threatening the home of Mat-Su Borough Assemblyman Ron Arvin, borough manager John Moosey said that Mat-Su residents value the services the borough provides. He knows this because they consistently vote to pay more taxes to fund the service.

“Nowhere in the country can you find people as willing to raise their hands and say, ‘yes, I will pay more for these important services,’” Moosey said. “They have done it again and again with their schools, their roads and with their fire services.”

Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss said that he supports the new station, even though he vetoed the funding mechanism used to pay for it.

“Station 5-1 is fairly appropriate because I think by a vote of 5-2 I was overridden,” he said.

He objected to the mechanism because it wasn’t put to a vote of Mat-Su residents but, he said, he was looking forward to helping pay for the building.

Planning for the station took a long-term view.

“We wanted it to be an investment for the future,” Steele said. “We wanted a building that we could count on to be here for the next 50 years.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.