The new Liberty Fire Hall, which was constructed on property jointly owned by the towns of Liberty and Dowelltown, is nearing completion and is slated to be in service by November 1. The new four-bay station features a new home for Liberty Engine 65, along with a water tanker, brush truck, and a DeKalb EMS satellite location, which should produce better response times for the western part of the county.
According to County Fire Chief Donny Green, the fire hall will serve as a district station where trainings and meetings can be held. The new 3,300 square foot facility is 55’ x 60’ in size, and there are even plans for the construction of a helipad, for incoming air ambulances, which currently have to land in the roadway or at DeKalb West School.
The current location for Engine 65 is a small, one-bay building next to the old high school in Liberty, with barely enough room to squeeze in the larger, modern firetruck.
The hall was constructed on the former site of an abandoned recreation park just off Highway 70 between the two towns. The 8.65-acre site was leased to the county by both towns for $1 for a 99-year lease. Last year, the county commission allocated $382,912 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) funding for the construction.
“We are going to refer to this as a district station because it’s a concept we are trying to move toward for future purposes, to have a station like this in each of our county’s three [fire] districts,” said DeKalb Fire Chief Donny Green. “We already have one district station at our Main Station right now. This is the concept we have that will house a fire engine, 2,500-gallon tanker to haul water to a fire scene, and a brush truck.”
“This particular station, because it’s on the western end of the county will also have the availability to house an ambulance if EMS so chooses to do that,” he continued.
“It’s three bays across the front of the building with a smaller rear bay accessible from the side of the building for the brush truck. We already have all of these vehicles. This project does not require us to purchase any new vehicles. They are all here so we’re not looking at additional purchases,” Chief Green explained.
“There is a restroom along with what we are referring to as a day room. It’s like an office or sitting room so that if an EMS crew is here the room could be furnished with a couch, chair, and TV to have a place for them to standby and it will also give us room if we have a meeting here,” said Chief Green.
“It allows us to distribute the equipment we already have more evenly across the county. It lets us put a tanker on this end of the county. Rural water supply is always an issue. Before we only had a tanker at the main station.”
“We’ll also get to put a brush truck down here. We have two of those right now at the main station. We will put one of them smaller four-wheel drive brush truck here. That allows us to get into some of these tighter areas and also during inclement weather when roads are bad, it’ll give us more access especially with the four-wheel drive brush truck,” Green explained.
“The existing Liberty station that we have been in since 1975 in Liberty has served us well for many years. It’s just very small now. The newer equipment is bigger. We have had challenges of just getting our fire engine in there. It is a single bay. This gives us much more room to work with. It will also serve as a district training center to bring all of our stations in the district to this location. We have the grounds outside to do outside training if we need to, and we also plan to put a helipad here. We have lots of room here to put a helipad for a medical aircraft to do a landing zone. It gets it off the highway in a safe location that we can control. Currently use the West School for that, but the issue there is when school is in session there is heavy traffic and children are present and that can be dangerous at times,” said Chief Green.
As for the DeKalb EMS crew to be located at the site, when the county commission approved the construction of the new fire hall, it was decided to add an additional bay to accommodate a satellite station for DeKalb EMS. The extra expense to the project would provide better medical response times to the western part of the county, which already sees a significant call volume.
The initial term for the EMS unit was as a “Day Truck,” but the term has caused some confusion as to what the purpose of the site is to be used for. EMS refers to a “Day Truck” as an EMS crew that performs transports for patients to doctor’s visits and other specialized needs. What the county intended with the Liberty Station, was having an Advanced Life Support (ALS) truck with paramedics at the location, at least during the high-traffic daylight shifts.
The county EMS operation currently has two Advanced Life Support 24/7 crews (24 hours per day, 7 days per week) and one Basic Life Support 12/7 (Day Truck) crew (12 hours per day, 7 days per week). Essentially, the county has three staffed ambulances, but only two are staffed 24 hours per day every day and the other is staffed for 12 hours per day every day. The county has five ambulances in the fleet including two back up units but two of the five ambulances have been down lately due to repairs. According to Director Hale, those two units are expected to be back in service by later this week. A decision will be made as to how to staff the EMS portion of the fire hall.
According to the 2020 US Census, the total population in the two districts that primarily make up the western portion of the county is as follows: District 1: Total Population- 2,860; and District 2: Total Population 2,691.
As for the opening of the new fire hall, Chief Green said, “Our plan is to go online November 1. We plan to have a ribbon cutting hopefully coordinating with the Chamber and we will invite officials out from both Liberty and Dowelltown and the DeKalb County governments as well as the community to come out and see what the facility looks like.”
