ZENON PARK — The Village of Zenon Park has begun the tender application process for the build of their new 60 by 60 foot fire hall which is planned to be completed by October.
Since its creation several decades ago, the Zenon Park Fire Department has shared a space with the village shop. Zenon Park has a 14 member volunteer Fire Department with one pumper, an emergency van and a heart defibrillator.
This created a size issue according to Maurice Lalonde, former chief for the department who retired from the role this past December, taking the position of captain.
“It will be a bigger building than the old one and we’ll be alone in there,” Lalonde said. “It will have a meeting room, better washroom facilities, a bit of a laundry facility to wash our gear and stuff— we don’t have any of that now.”
In addition to the increase in size, he said that their new hall will contain a third vehicle bay to eventually place a water tanker in, which is important as they do a large amount of rural calls where they require the extra water capacity.
“Right now we don’t have that capacity, so we are really relying on farmers with water tanks and that kind of thing. Now we’ll have room to get a water tanker, so that will be a big improvement there.”
Lalonde said the initiative to build the new hall came from the $50,000 given to the community through the HumboldtStrong Community Foundation in 2019.
“That’s what got us started. We wanted a fire hall for a long time,” Lalonde said.
“So when we got that $50,000 we said we would put that aside and what we should do with that money. So that’s where the inspiration came from.”
To raise the remainder of funds, fire crews focused on soliciting individual and commercial donations, the pandemic causing traditional community event fundraisers to not be an option.
“The pandemic came and the cost of the materials and lumber and everything went crazy,” he said. “So we put it for last summer, hoping the materials [cost] would get better. They have gotten a little bit better, but the pricing is still not great— we just can’t keep putting it off either.”
All tenders may be submitted by email, fax, mail or in person to the Village of Zenon Park by Feb. 21.
When asked if there was a message he would like to get out to the community, Lalonde said that this project shows when the community comes together they can accomplish good— or even impossible things.
“It’s a combination of personal and business and all kinds of donations,” he said. “Some people have put a lot of work in this because even though the money was given to us, we had to go out and solicit the money.”
