Construction slated for two new fire stations

WASILLA — The borough’s biggest fire department is set to get a little bigger.

According to Borough Emergency Services Director Dennis Brodigan, two new fire stations are on deck to be built this year. One will be on Fairview Loop, catty-corner to Snowshoe Elementary. The other will be on Knik-Goose Bay Road at its intersection with Horizon Drive.

Brodigan said that if all goes according to plan, construction will begin — though not necessarily finish — this year. Though the borough has lately had to cut back on capital projects, the stations, since they’re both Central Mat-Su Fire Department projects — fall outside the borough’s overall budget. The department has been socking away money steadily to build them.

Right now, the borough has held one public hearing on the stations and is planning a second.

Asked how Wednesday’s meeting went at Knik Elementary School to discuss the station on Horizon Drive near Mile 12 Knik-Goose Bay Road, Brodigan didn’t have an answer.

“With the exception of one of our fire board of supervisors members nobody else showed up,” Brodigan said.

Still, he said, he hasn’t heard any opposition and doesn’t really expect any, “other than the fact that we haven’t started constructing them yet.”

Building a station out that way has been a long and involved process. Brodigan said it took a year to find a well that produces enough water to fill up fire trucks.

“Indeed there is water and the well is already there,” Brodigan said. “That was the fifth hole drilled.”

As for the Fairview Loop station, interested parties can attend the borough’s second open house Wednesday at Snowshoe Elementary School.

And that’s about it for construction projects this year for emergency services.

There are plans afoot to maybe put in a fire training facility on Knik-Goose Bay Road where firefighters could learn to douse flames in structures and maybe even in crashed airplanes.

“The airplane prop would be an airplane fuselage and the fires will be strictly propane,” Brodigan said. “We’re not going to pour jet fuel down and light it on fire.”

Emergency Services had been thinking about holding a series of meetings on the plans. But those plans are on hold for now. Brodigan and his staff were asked to bring that plan to the borough assembly first.

“We’ll present it to them first and then get direction from there,” Brodigan said.

Also on deck is a station in Caswell Lakes. Residents there voted to start a fire department last year and the borough has since set aside a parcel of land for the station. Emergency Services asked the state for money to build a station this year and last year, even before there was a fire service area.

“It didn’t happen last year and didn’t happen again this year,” Brodigan said, but they’re going to keep trying.

District 2, the fire service area created when the Big Lake and Meadow Lakes fire departments merged, also wants to build a new station.

Brodigan said the department is planning to send out a request for proposals for a fire station somewhere in the neighborhood of Parks Highway and Johnson Road.

A similar process is in the works for a station to replace the Central station near Mat-Su Regional Medical Center.

“The door is wide open in terms of what the proposal is,” Brodigan said. It could be land, land and a building or land and a contract to build a station.

And the borough is looking further out as well. Though there are no immediate plans to build anything, the borough has set aside land in Point MacKenzie, anticipating growth in the area substantial enough to warrant a fire service area. Talkeetna has a similar parcel. There’s even a plot of land for a second Caswell station.

“I probably will be retired by the time that one happens.

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