Petrolia Volunteer Fire Department pushing forward with new fire station
PETROLIA — Landlocked on a narrow lot between railroad tracks and busy Route 268, the borough’s volunteer fire station is too cramped for all the department fire trucks and the necessities of its 18 active firefighters.
“We’re just out of room,” said Chuck Barnes, chief of the Petrolia Volunteer Fire Department.
The department has been working since 2010 to raise $1 million to bring life to conceptual drawings of a new station that would house all the trucks and provide rooms for turnout gear, bunks, training classes, a kitchen, showers and an office.
“We’ve been trying to get a new building since then, but it hasn’t worked out,” Barnes said.
Four of Station No. 28’s five trucks fit in the fire house that was built in the late 1920s or early 1930s and occupied by the department since 1944. The odd truck out is the brush truck, which is used to respond to brush fires. It is parked in the parking lot for most of the year and stored indoors at an off-site location in the winter.
“We have approximately 10 feet behind our truck,” Barnes said.
In that space is a refrigerator, small round table and a variety of tools, gear and supplies. On Thursday, it was cluttered with stuff that firefighters haven’t had a chance to stow since responding to recent floods. A cleanup detail was planned for that evening.
The turnout gear firefighters wear when responding to calls is hung on a wall adjacent to a fire truck, which is parked at an angle to allow them a little room to suit up.
The station’s foundation and cement block walls have cracks caused by vibrations from trains that rumble down the adjacent tracks, Barnes said.
The department shares the building with the Karns City Regional Ambulance Service.
“We’re building for the future,” Barnes said.
Neither the existing station nor any of the surrounding fire department stations have the space or facilities to be used as a shelter in the event of a flood or emergency at one of the chemical plants in the area, he said.
Plans are to start construction next year. The new station will be a modest-looking 114-by-84-foot steel building with only one window on a nearby lot the department is negotiating to buy.
To achieve that goal, the department has been has been raising money by renting its social hall and hosting ladies’ nights and an annual gun bash, which is scheduled for July 13 at Paradise Park in Armstrong County.
The fire department rents space to the ambulance service, which will be allowed to remain there after the department builds its new station, Barnes said.
