New Princeton, B.C. emergency centre to be built on higher ground

On Wednesday, local officials announced where $1.9 million in provincial funding will go.

The province recently announced a growing communities grant and that Princeton, B.C., will receive over $1.9 million in funding.

On Wednesday, local officials announced that the funding will be going towards a second fire hall, training centre and emergency operations centre just outside of town.

“It was a grant that came out for capital expenditures. This is something that has been on our plan. We have been talking about it for four years trying to figure out how we are going to come up with funding. This isn’t the full amount of money, we still have to come up with some more, but it is a good start to build a building,” said Princeton Mayor Spencer Coyne.

“We can go into the planning stage and get some architectural designs done and move from there. Then we can start talking to other partners. There is another emergency service that I would like up here, and if we can make an agreement, then we would have everybody in the same location.”

Coyne went on to say that it is important for the town to have all emergency services on higher ground, as the town’s key emergency infrastructure is currently located in the downtown core.

The new site is located near David Browne Way, just outside of the town centre.

“Building a facility up here, it gives us continuity during major events. It gets us out of the floodplain — it’s a position that is going to be pretty resilient to wildfires. It’ll give us a really good operational control area that we can work out of,” said Coyne.

“Our public works is just next door, ground search and rescue is going to be up here, the highway contractor is up here as well and the RCMP have also purchased property to build nearby. It will give us an area to work collaboratively as well which is key when we are talking about emergency services.”