We are about to open the doors on a beautiful modern station that both our firefighters and the community deserve. I am so proud of this moment for the Town of Essex. Congratulations to our fire department on their new home. Thank you to our Chief Rick Arnel and Deputy Chief Jason Pillon for your work in this legacy project for Essex.
Recap of the how we got here:
Town of Essex Master Fire Plan 2017-2021 ( Pomax Consulting June 2017 ) Recommendations:
“Gesto station relocation, provide a new station and response to McGregor will improve by four to five minutes. Relocated Gesto station continues response to community wide rural fires and response configurations will shift further north. Conjoined training facility with new Station 2.
Response to Essex Centre should improve, Station 2 is back up to Essex Centre station. Response route is shorter and more direct and four firefighters reside in Gesto. May add a few minutes from residence to station, will net out in travel time from station to incident”.
Issues with existing Gesto location:
Previous review (2016) reported: major issues with the size of the apparatus bays (length and width) and barely meets the requirements for trucks. Lack of a proper exhaust system in the apparatus bay no place to store or decontaminate personal protective equipment (PPE) and washrooms are severely undersized, dated, and are not barrier free. There are no change rooms, showers or functional kitchen and no file storage, no proper training room. Ideally a new fire station should be relocated as determined by the master fire plan.
If anyone want a copy of the Fire Master Plan let me know. I will do a feature on Station 3 shortly.
Whoot Whoot… Doors are almost open!
