The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

There is a new Fire Hall in Grays River, and you are invited to tour it this weekend. It is located across from Duffy’s Irish Pub on SR4, not very far from the old hall.

“This has been a long project,” said Gene Strong, former Fire Chief, who spearheaded the undertaking. “The process goes back 15 plus years.

"It’s always been a kind of vision of mine to get the fire hall out of the flood plain. Earlier in 2007, we began negotiating with Casper Schmand to acquire this property. In ‘08 we finally finalized it. When they built it we would do a property swap. He would get that and we would get this. We began that in 2007 and wrapped that up. In 2008 floods really made that hall over there not safe to operate out of so we had to close that hall. Then we really kicked in and went after the federal FEMA funds to relocate over here. That took all the way into 2010 to early ’11. In 2011, we got that wrapped up and all approved.”

In the interim, vehicles and equipment were kept at private homes and the Valley Bible Church until the new building could be built.

“That’s the great part of this community, they are so supportive,” said Strong.

Working alongside Strong were the fire district board of commissioners. Dennis Nagasawa has been along for the whole journey, but Lawrence “Dale” Rose and Cliff Wiley eventually switched to Dave White and Don Smith.

“I started as chief, I did all the paperwork to do all the FEMA funding," Strong said. "I tracked it all the way through. The fortunate part is I have worked with FEMA a lot over my nearly 40 year career.

"The project is going to cost over a million dollars when completed. The building is 100 percent complete, but the paperwork is not, still wrapping up the last of it. The building alone cost us $936,000, the building, the septic, the generator, all of that. The district share is going to be $125,000. We had about $190,000 dollars in flood insurance money, and the rest is coming from FEMA and the state.

“This wouldn’t happen without the funding.

“Fire commissioners have been supportive. I’ve been fortunate to work with good fire commissioners and a good community. We made a long jump forward. We’ve got a nice parking lot and a nice training room.”

Construction began in June of last year and finished this February. It was not without some trouble.

“The biggest problem we ran into was spongy clay underneath here," Strong said. "We had to get that out. We had to hire a geotech firm in the middle of this thing to evaluate the soils and tell us what we needed to do.”

This building has a back up generator, and all the outside lights are LEDs, which will save money in the long run. There is a kitchen, an office and bathrooms with showers, as well as a classroom that is already in use by recent volunteer EMTs in training. There is also a landing and an upstairs room used for training. There are four bays for emergency vehicles.

The new fire hall will be having a dedication and open house this Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. The public is invited to attend, Strong said.