WESTHAMPTON — One of the risks firefighters face at the Westhampton Fire Department, apart from dousing the flames of a burning building, is the decontamination process after they return from such a call.
With a lack of space at the fire and police station located at 48 Stage Road, the 30 members of the volunteer fire department must use their showers at home to clean off the soot from a destroyed building.
Although there is a washer extractor at the station to clean off the firefighters’ protective turnout gear, without a decontamination room or showers at the facility, firefighters are bringing harmful contaminants home from work.
“The operating safety of personnel and spatial needs are our biggest challenges,” Fire Chief Christopher Norris said in a recent interview with the Gazette. “Right now, there are no shower facilities … (Firefighters) get into their personal vehicles, drive home, and take all those contaminants with them inside their house.”
On Oct. 27, Westhampton residents will vote on a Proposition 2½ debt-exclusion override to fund a new, 10,600-square-foot public safety complex, estimated by town officials to cost a total of $4.4 million. The Special Town Election will be held at Town Hall from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.
A vote at a special Town Meeting on Sept. 11, which required a two-thirds majority, narrowly passed with a 69 percent approval, giving the town permission to borrow the funding necessary for the construction of a new complex. If approved by voters in the Oct. 27 election, it would be the most expensive project in the town’s history.
While many residents have voiced opposition about the costs of a new public safety complex, Norris said it would provide firefighters with the facilities the department needs.
“There is a higher potential for cross-contamination of all the carcinogens that are the byproducts of the combustion process, which leads to increased prevalence to cancer,” Norris said. “The new building would provide locker rooms and shower capabilities.”
Originally constructed in 1948 as a highway garage, the fire and police station underwent a spatial needs analysis as part of a feasibility study that evaluated the existing 7,300-square-foot building.
The report identified several issues with the building, including a lack of space to safely perform operations, a lack of appropriately sized bays for fire apparatus, a lack of a fire protection system, and non-compliance with the Massachusetts Handicap Accessibility or Americans with Disabilities Act regulations, among others.
“The proposed building would be two-thirds for apparatus, (such as) police cruisers, ambulances, and fire engines,” Norris said. “The remaining parts would be for administrative offices for the police, fire, and EMS,” along with additional room for storage and training.
The feasibility study, completed by Caolo and Bieniek Associates of Chicopee, looked at the options of renovating the current structure or demolishing the building to make way for a new public safety complex.
Since renovating the building would cost an additional $1.3 million compared to constructing a new one, the Public Safety Complex Review Committee recommended building a new facility that is intended to last at least 40 years as the best option.
The study recommends a 13,000-square-foot building, but Norris said that in order to be “practical and fiscally responsible to the community” the review committee brought the size down to 10,600 square feet.
When a call comes in, firefighters are rushing to get their gear on just a few inches away from the fire trucks where the gear is stored. Without an exhaust removal system at the current department, Norris said firefighters are continuously exposed to exhaust fumes from the vehicles. “They have 6 inches here and there,” Norris said. “In terms of safely donning and putting on their gear, they are putting it on close to these vehicles … Bases on national recommendations, we would need to segregate an area to properly store and keep turnout gear.”
The fire department has had to spend extra money on new vehicles just to get them to fit inside because of the size constraints in the bays for fire tankers and trucks.
The latest tanker purchased in 2017 needed to have a customized wheelbase so that it could be stored in the bay, Norris said.
It cost an extra $20,000 to shorten the wheelbase, which still only allows a few inches in the back and just enough room to walk in front of the vehicle. It also meant that the vehicle’s bumper could not have carrying capacity. Norris said the size constraints of the bay are limiting what vehicle grants he can apply for.
A 1987 engine has exceeded its life expectancy, Norris said. New engines must meet an updated national standard which would be too big for the department’s bays, so he cannot apply for grants or replace the 31-year-old vehicle.
Over the past two years, the fire department has received $900,000 in grants for personal protective equipment, self-containing breathing devices, and to help fund the 2017 tanker, Norris said. There are no grants, however, for a new public safety complex.
At the Sept. 11 special Town Meeting, town officials presented the proposed plan of how the debt-exclusion override would work.
The town’s financial advisor, Clark H. Rowell, said there will be an anticipated “jump” in taxes during fiscal year 2020, and after that it will stay level over the life of the project’s debt.
The monthly increase is estimated to be 24 cents per thousand dollars of assessed property value for the average taxpayer in Westhampton. That would mean an increase of $69 a year for a property valued at $286,000, which is the figure town officials used to define the average taxpayer.
Since the current tax rate is at $19.43, the average taxpayer currently pays about $5,557 a year. If the Proposition 2½ for the complex were to pass, that average taxpayer would pay $5,626 a year for the next 20 to 25 years.
Residents have expressed reservations at the prospect of spending $4.4 million at the special Town Meeting in September and in recent interviews with the Gazette.
Barbara Nichols, of Main Road, said she recognizes that there is a need for a new station because the current one is “completely inadequate, it’s not safe, and it does not match most of ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).”
She continued, “The choices that we’ve been given, I feel, are not fair.”
The cost for a new station, along with other items on the town’s capital budgeting plan, left her wanting a “better option,” she said. She asked why there were only two options given — renovating for $5.7 million or building new for $4.4 million.
“We do need something new,” Nichols said. “We need something better that takes care all the safety issues for the general public and the people that help us stay safe.”
Barbara Pelissier, a town resident who attended the special Town Meeting in September, told the Gazette that she believes the fire department needs to address the safety concerns for volunteers, but disagrees with raising the tax rate for a new safety complex.
“What is the urgency?” she asked. “We are a very small town with a small population and few businesses. Resident’s property taxes are what pay for everything.”
Pelissier said when she inquired about the station lacking an exhaust removal system, she was told by the fire department that it would cost $60,000 to install one.
Pelissier said the town can help address some of the safety concerns, and in the meantime, ask state Sen. Adam Hinds, D-Pittsfield, and Democratic state Rep. nominee Lindsay Sabadosa, if elected to office, to work together to get funding from the state.
“It’s a big project and it would be smart to wait and see if they could secure funding,” Pelissier said.
At the September special Town Meeting, Highway Superintendent David Blakesley said that while the police department needs more space, the fire department’s spatial needs “are not as inadequate as I’m hearing they are.”
Blakesley, who served on the fire department for nearly 40 years, also disagreed with the town spending $4.4 million for a new public safety complex, and disagreed with some of the safety hazards the fire chief had outlined.
Norris said that the water line freezes to the fire department every year, and the way they combat that is by leaving the water running throughout the winter months to ensure it does not leave the department without running water and working bathrooms.
Blakesley also contested Norris’ claim that there was not a containment system for the floor drains at the fire station. Although the feasibility study had stated that there was no such containment system, Blakesley said that in 2001, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protections required the floor drains to be capped off so that harmful chemicals could not seep into the soil.
A MassDEP spokeswoman, Catherine Skiba, confirmed that a 300-gallon tank had been installed in the summer 2001.
Norris said the first he heard about this was on the floor of town meeting and that Blakesley never brought it up during interviews for the feasibility study nor the informational session that the highway superintendent attended.
Last year, the fire department responded to 212 calls, six of which were structure fires, according to Norris.
Residents have argued that since the department is a volunteer force, they are not spending 40 hours a week at the department. Some have even argued that volunteers drive themselves to respond to a call and bring their turnout gear with them.
Assistant Fire Chief and Public Safety Complex Review Committee member Stephen Holt said he and other firefighters dress in their turnout gear just a few inches from the fire trucks as they pull out, and he has been grazed by them as the do so.
“We are not building a structure for us, we are building for the town of Westhampton for the next 50 years,” Holt said.
Norris also disagreed with the notion that firefighters are driving themselves to the scene of a call.
“Firefighters respond to the station and that’s where the safety issues come,” Norris said, who is encouraging resident to visit the station to see first-hand the spatial needs at the department.
“We are inviting residents to take a look around for a better, informed decision on how to vote,” Norris said
On Oct. 27, the Norris will be at the station from 8 a.m. to noon to give residents a tour ofthe current fire and police station so they can be informed prior to their vote at Town Hall.
Luis Fieldman can be reached at lfieldman@gazettenet.com