Bear Creek to expand fire station

BEAR CREEK - A building, which served through the years as a gathering place for Bear Creek residents, will soon be coming down for a much-needed expansion of the fire station.
The wooden structure, which faces Main Street, but is located beside Virginia Avenue, has fallen into disrepair to such an extent that Mayor Rob Taylor mentioned it has become a safety hazard and should be torn down.
“Years ago, the guys in town built it to have a place to come hang around each other, drink coffee, play checkers, that kind of thing,” Taylor mentioned.
The building has been repaired through the years, including work done to the roof, but the structure has deteriorated to the point that a slight push on the back wall causes it to bow inward, the mayor showed.
“It’s not about to fall, but that is probably the next stage.  I think we are going to go ahead and just dismantle the building and clear it off,” Taylor said.
“The structure, where it attaches to the ground, has significant termite damage.  It’s getting to be a safety issue,” Taylor pointed out.  “There is no way we can rebuild it like this.”
At the town council’s February meeting, a decision was unanimously voted upon to dismantle the building and use the lot for an expansion of the fire station next door. Voting in favor were council members Chris Gillum, Tom Misner, Adam Hyde and Eric Loden. Council member Eric Mills was absent from the meeting.
“As long as I have been here, it’s been used as a storage  building,” Taylor said.
The building was formerly used to store lawn mowers and surplus fire department equipment, but that equipment has all been moved to a warehouse located by the waterworks facility, the mayor explained.
“Right now, there is really nothing in this (wooden) building,” Taylor added.
Plans are to unload any of the current items stored in the wooden building into a dumpster before the building is dismantled, town officials said.
“I think the building will be gone by early summer,” Taylor said. “They can take it apart piece by piece, put it in a truck and haul it off.”
Plans are for the town to accept bids from those wishing to haul off the debris, according to Taylor.
“It’s not getting rid of history by no means,” he assured. “A lot of people have a lot of memories here.  Hopefully, there are some pictures around of it.
“It’s to the point now that it’s dangerous,” Taylor emphasized. “If it stays here another few years, it’s going to end up falling.”
Not only does the back wall move, but the entire building appeared to be bowing during recent high winds.
Termite damage is visible on the wooden benches built into the front wall of the building and boards from the porch are rotting and bowing, creating a falling hazard for residents, town officials stated.
“It’s not going to take a lot to blow it down,” noted Bear Creek Fire Chief Adam Loden.
After the wooden building is dismantled, some of the wood that might still be in good condition will be used as paneling inside an office in the expanded fire station, according to Taylor.

Building became known as The Blacksmith Shop

James Loden, a former long-time council member and a present fire department member, recalled the wooden building was erected while he was in high school in the late 1970s, as a place for the men of the community to gather and play checkers.
At first, the building did not have electricity, with the council later approving to add electricity to the building, Loden said.
“They used to call it The Blacksmith Shop,” Loden recalled. Although the building was never used for that purpose, it had an appearance similar to the older blacksmith shops, town officials indicated.
“It was never really used for anything other than a gathering place,” Loden recalled. “It was built to look like a pole barn. It was enclosed. It had a dirt floor.
“The whole time I was on the council, they just used it for storage,” Loden added. “If you didn’t know where to put something, you would just throw it in there. It hasn’t been used for anything other than storage in 30 years, I guess.”

Fire station
overcrowded with
 vehicles

Another issue in Bear Creek is the overcrowding situation at the fire station, which has five bays that are overfilled with trucks, town officials said.
“Right now, we have trucks sitting in between trucks, so you have to pull one truck out to be able to get the truck you need,” Taylor said.
Taylor, who was a long-time fire chief for the town, as well, knows the value of having adequate space for trucks and equipment.
“With this expansion, we’ll have enough bays (so) every truck will have a (bay),” Taylor added.
Once the wooden building is torn down, plans are for the town to add three more bays and attach the extension to the present fire station, town officials explained.
The three extra bay doors will allow firetrucks to exit onto Virginia Avenue, according to Taylor.
“It will be a lot easier for the trucks to get out,” he said.
The current station has four larger bays that contain three pumpers, a brush truck and a tanker, with a side bay containing the department’s medical truck, noted Bear Creek Fire Lt. Eric Mills.
Two larger bays face Main Street, with three bays facing Georgia Avenue behind it.
“We’ve got two pumpers stacked on top of each other pretty much and our grass truck is in between.  We have to move one of the pumpers to get the grass truck out,” Mills emphasized.
A recent call, where a brush fire had spread to consume multiple structures and a vehicle, resulted in the fire department having to move vehicles in order to access the ones they needed, Mills said.
The mayor emphasized that all of the fire department’s critical units can be accessed quickly.
“But if you have a brush fire, you have to move a pumper out to get the brush truck out,” Taylor said.
“I’ve been here going on 21 years, and we have just not had a whole lot of room in this building,” Mills said.
“I hate to see history go, but we’ve got to expand to help the community so we can be quicker on response time,” Mills pointed out. “It’s a hassle for us to have to pull trucks out and move all this stuff.”