LYME — The Lyme Fire Department is sounding the alarm that next year is the time to replace its aging firehouse, which the chief says is no longer able to meet the department’s needs and requires significant and costly upgrades.
The structure off High Street is nearly 50 years old and has functional, structural and mechanical deficiencies that impede firefighters’ response times, and the station doesn’t meet certain health and safety standards for cleaning gear and fire trucks, Chief Michael Mundy said this week.
Mundy raised those concerns and several others in a Listserv post last week, where he noted that the idea of replacing the current building isn’t new.
With that said, now looks like an appropriate time to proceed, he wrote.
“It seems like it has been a topic of discussion and a recognized need for almost as long as I have been volunteering, over 20 years,” he said. “The priority of new town offices, new highway garage and Lyme School expansion all put this project on a delayed track. Considering the above, I feel it is a project whose time has come.”
In an interview outside the firehouse earlier this week, Mundy said the town plans to place an article on the warrant in March for a to-be-determined amount that will help supplement capital reserve funding and private donations for the proposed $1.3 million project.
The town has about $400,000, plus interest, already in reserve funding for the project, Selectboard Chairman Kevin Sahr said. In addition, Mundy said several residents have come forward and donated toward the rebuild, which will lessen the additional amount the town needs to raise through taxes to complete the project. He hopes those efforts continue.
The department received a $100,000 grant, plus a match for that amount, and has received additional $10,000 and $5,000 pledges, Mundy said.
“The fundraising is going very well,” Selectman Ben Kilham said.
The fire department, which has 21 volunteer members and responds to more than 200 calls per year, is outgrowing its current space, which in part hinders response time, Mundy said. The fast squad operates out of the station, which was built in 1971 and also functions as the town’s emergency management operations center.
Mundy proposes building a new 5,000-square-foot station — about 1,000 square feet larger than the current structure — on the existing land. The rough plans call for four bays on the front of the building and a fifth bay off to the side that could act as an entry point for the town’s rescue boat or forestry equipment, which currently sit outside.
The new firehouse would have a wash station, so firefighters could launder their gear in-house. The new building also would have floor drains, so crews could wash the trucks down when they return from calls; in the winter months, washing the trucks outside isn’t feasible, said Mundy, who spoke to the importance of cleaning all of the equipment after each fire.
“The evidence is mounting that firefighter sickness and fatalities are not just at the scene of the fire, but can surface years later from harmful chemical exposure,” he said.
Currently, firefighters dress and undress into their fire gear in a small space around the corner from a makeshift kitchen. An office space and meeting room also is nearby. Another aspect of the building that raises safety concerns is the lack of a proper exhaust removal system from the fire truck bays, he added.
The bay doors and roof are in need of upgrades, as are the heating and alarm systems. The current steel structure of the building also has insulation problems and retrofitting it isn’t an option because of structural issues, Mundy said.
“This building is very old and is not in good shape,” Kilham said, adding that it is not energy-efficient.
The communications equipment stored inside the firehouse for the 100-foot antenna atop the building also sits in a less-than-ideal space that gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter, Mundy said.
Mundy is working on bringing a “tight budget” figure to voters in March, in hopes of getting the project approved in one shot and kicking off construction in early spring 2020.
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.