Cramped Virden fire station getting much-needed expansion with $3M in funding

Precious time is being wasted when a call comes in to Virden's fire department, fire Chief Cory Nixon says.

There isn't enough space for the southwestern Manitoba town's volunteer firefighters to gear up, meaning they're forced to jockey for position, he said, having to stand in line before jumping into the pumper trucks. It's also becoming unsafe for firefighters to stand in front of the trucks while gearing up.

"We're very tight quarters," he said. "We have to walk sideways between trucks sometimes to get into them, so we're just looking to get more space."

Firefighters in Virden are about to get that space, thanks to $3 million in funding — split 50/50 between the Town of Virden and the provincial government — to renovate the current fire hall and construct a new building beside it.

The new building will be used to house the department's five fire trucks.

Right now, parking is at a premium in the hall. Vehicles are squeezed in and parked behind one another. Two are so close that their doors open into each other.

"Currently three of our trucks share one [bay] door, so if you need the one in the back, you have to move two first," said Nixon.

Nixon also pointed out there were only a few centimetres of space between the front bumper of the main fire engine and the bay door.

"Our gear is all located on our apparatus floor too, so all the personal protective equipment that we wear is exposed to the diesel fumes. One of the trucks sits right beside the gear rack, so when it drives away it just covers the gear that's on the rack in exhaust," he said.

Cancer is a major concern for firefighters, Nixon added.

"We're trying to do everything we can to keep our members safe. The safer we can show our volunteers we can keep them, the more likely they are to come help out and volunteer."

The Wallace District Fire Department, which serves Virden, has 27 volunteer members, who respond to calls in a roughly 1,200-square-kilometre area in the rural municipalities of Wallace-Woodworth and Pipestone.

"We have a busy volunteer fire department," said Virden Mayor Tina Williams, and the town's location on the Trans-Canada Highway means they respond to a lot of accidents.

"We have the oil field, all the farming communities around here, as well as our regular ratepayers in town with fires and incidents they need help for."