The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON – Members of Columbia County Fire District 3 are getting excited about the new fire station on Patit Road, with its 13,500 square feet and 16 truck bays, brand new living quarters for five firefighters, and enough offices for all the command staff.

General contractor Joe Christensen, with G2 Construction out of Tri-Cities, is planning to have the $850,000 remodel of the old Columbia Rural Electric Association building complete by the end of this month. New Assistant Fire Chief Jeromy Phinney says the district plans to start moving equipment and supplies from the current station at 206 W. Main St. immediately.

"In my opinion, the only thing we're giving up by moving out to this building is location," Chief Rick Turner said. "The fire department will no longer have a physical presence in town."

But both Turner and Phinney believe the location just east of town will not hurt the district's response times; in fact, said Bob Allbee, it may improve the district's response since volunteers won't have to navigate through town to get to the station. "Most of our volunteers live on this side of town anyway," he said. "And the majority of our calls for service are located east of town." Allbee is a volunteer with Fire District 3 as well as the U.S. Forest Service's Umatilla Forest Fire Management Officer.

The new fire station, which Fire District 3 purchased from Columbia REA last May for $750,000, has plenty of room for the district's current needs, with room for future expansion.

"This should meet the needs of the district for a long, long time," Turner said. "We built more capacity into this thing than we need immediately, trying to build for the future while staying within our budget. We would not fill this building with our current fire and EMS resources even if we brought the equipment in from Turner, which of course we don't intend to do."

The fire district houses a few fire trucks on Turner Road in a garage as a sort of outstation or satellite station for quicker response to some of the wildland fires that occur in that area. The district used to have an outstation at Highway 12 and Tucannon Road as well, but it lost all its volunteers from that part of the county and so it became inefficient to continue storing a fire truck out there, Turner said.

Dian Ver Valen

(l to r) Bob Allbee, a volunteer with FD3, and Assistant Chief Jeromy Phinney stand in the truck bay area of the new fire station on Patit Road. With 16 bays, the new station will provide more than adequate space for the district's fire trucks and other equipment.

The new fire station on Patit Road is located on a little under five acres; a few outbuildings will help with additional storage. CREA used the building for many years as a local warehouse and storage for line equipment.

The truck bays didn't require much in the remodel, but the 6,000 square feet of office space was a six-month job. What was once a plywood shell for storage and some repair and shop work is now a two-story sheetrocked, painted, well-lit fire station with new flooring, cabinets, kitchen, dining room, living room, fitness room, three full bathrooms including showers, five bedrooms and five offices.

The fire district currently pays rent to remain in the building on West Main Street. The district sold that building about a year ago to a real estate holding company; they've been paying a couple thousand dollars per month since then to stay, Phinney said. They hope that April's rent will be the last they pay to stay in their current quarters.