Sarnia’s new Fire Station No. 3 now in operation on Colborne Road

One of Bryan Van Gaver’s final duties as Sarnia’s fire chief was seeing firefighters move into a new fire station on Colborne Road.

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Van Gaver timed his retirement next month, after 37 years with Sarnia Fire Rescue, so he could open the long-promised $7.6-million new station No. 3 built at the corner of Colborne Road and Michigan Avenue to replace a station from the mid- 1950s.

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“I was first hearing talks when I was a firefighter that this building was going to be replaced,” Van Gaver said. “I really wanted to see it through.”

Firefighters moved in a few weeks ago and city officials gathered at the hall this week to cut a ribbon and make the opening official.

“It’s just a nice building to work out of, as compared to what people put up with previously,” Van Gaver said.

“It was a dim and dungy building, I’ll say.”

The old building also was much smaller at 465 square meters (5,000 square feet) compared to its 790 square meter replacement built directly behind the original, which is being demolished.

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Much of the additional space went to separate space for cleaning firefighters’ bunker gear, and the addition of a second truck bay, Van Gaver said.

The new bays are also longer to accommodate larger fire trucks in the future.

“Sarnia is growing vertically” with the addition of taller buildings and the station will be able to accommodate larger aerial fire trucks, if needed in the future, Van Gaver said.

The living and training space for the four-person crews working at the station is also larger.

There’s a gym, like in the service’s other firehalls, and a larger kitchen, lounge and dining area “that also doubles as a training area,” Van Gaver said.

That replaces a “galley” style kitchen in the old building.

Each firefighter also has a separate living area with a bed and desk now, compared to a “dorm area” in the old station where three firefighters were all together, separated by hospital-style curtains when men and women worked together.

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“Now, everyone’s got their own space,” Van Gaver said.

That includes the captain on duty, who also had a separate space at the old building.

The desks in each of the living spaces are useful because of recently enacted firefighter certification rules requiring studying and completing online courses, Van Gaver said.

The old hall had two toilets, one sink and a shower in the same room. Now there are separate male and female washrooms with showers, as well as an accessible gender-neutral washroom.

The new hall’s front entrance has a special feature, a public panic room in a vestibule.

“If someone from the public was concerned for their safety, they can run in here, hit that button and it automatically locks the door,” Van Gaver said. An intercom allows them to call for help.

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The project’s architects designed other fire stations that incorporated a public panic room and proposed it during planning for the Sarnia project.

“We thought it was a great idea,” Van Gaver said.

At the front of the new building is an area with large windows where a restored 1921 fire truck, which was Sarnia’s first motorized fire vehicle, can be displayed.

The local firefighters’ association “spent approximately 20 years tearing that thing right down to nothing and rebuilding it from the ground up,” Van Gaver said. “It is absolutely gorgeous.”

The display space can double as a community room for other activities.

One of the goals of the project was to boost energy efficiency in the new “smart” fire station, he said. Motion detectors allow the building to send heat and air conditioning to separate zones where people are.

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There is also energy-efficient in-floor heating in the bay area expected to pay for itself in seven to 10 years for a building expected to be used for 50 to 70 years, he said.

It also has a system to capture diesel exhaust from fire trucks, an emergency generator and is designed to help deal with risks firefighters face from contaminants they may encounter at fires.

An area with two large bunker gear cleaning machines is located next to the bays, on the other side of the station and way from the living area.

After returning from a fire, firefighters can remove gear to be cleaned before they enter the living areas of the building.

“Nothing dirty goes into the clean zone,” Van Gaver said. “It’s very key to keeping contaminations minimal and keeping everyone safe.”

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That side of the building also includes a storage room for gear used by each of the shifts at the station.

The second bay at the new station will be used for a new emergency command vehicle expected to arrive this year to replace an existing vehicle that is 30-plus years old, Van Gaver said.

Work continued this week on demolition of the old station. Once it’s gone and land beneath it prepared, crews at the new station will be able to pull straight into the bays which have doors at each end.

For now, they are backing in from the entrance off Michigan Avenue.

Plans are to install pavement in the spring on the Colborne Road entrance.

Crews rotate between the city’s five stations annually so “everybody will get their turn” in the new Colborne Road station, Van Gaver said.

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When Sarnia and the former Town of Clearwater amalgamated in 1991, the fire service which had three stations at the time, added Clearwater’s Wellington Street and Bright’s stations for a total of five.

The station on East Street was built in 1965 and the stations at Colborne and at Scott Road were built around the same time in the 1950s. The Scott Road station was renovated in 2015.

Wellington Street was built in about 1979 and Bright’s Grove in 1980.

The current capital plan has a project earmarked for upgrades at the Bright’s Grove station, pending funding and approval by city council, Van Gaver said.

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