MILES CITY - It’s been five years since the Miles City fire station was deemed unsafe, and firefighters were forced to move out of the structure and into modular homes just feet away.
Since the conditions of the actual building have gotten worse, a solution to fix the dilapidated building could be on the way, if residents sign off on it.
That’s the hope anyway for Miles City Fire Chief Branden Stevens, who’s been championing change for years. Stevens jokes about how he’s ready to retire but then gets serious.
“I need to get this figured out before I do that,” he says.
Miles City Mayor John Hollowell says while the issue of the fire station has been on the minds of the Council for years, finding the money to do so within the confines of the existing budget was never possible until recently. The Council voted to approve sending a general obligation bond to voters to build a $3.9 million new fire station where the existing one stands on Main Street.
The fire department itself has another $1.5 million saved up for the project. However, when the measure would be put on the ballot is up in the air, said Stevens.
Increasing taxes for any small town like Miles City seems overwhelming for some residents, Stevens says. If passed, the increase would be about $80 a year on a home valued at $200,000.
Those numbers seem relatively small when you step inside the fire station and get the rundown on the list of items wrong with the building and the reasons why three separate building inspectors have deemed it unsafe.
“The foundation has shifted,” said Stevens while standing on uneven concrete where the fire trucks enter and exit through giant garage doors. “We have water entering into the building,” he says, adding that the wood framing is rotted.
This equipment and its firefighters serve as the lifeline for Miles City and beyond, where 85 percent of calls are medical.
But the building where the fire engines and ambulance respond to calls is structurally unsafe, so much so that the city’s insurance won’t cover anything on that side of the building.
“We are concerned that a heavy wind, you know, could drop this structure,” said Stevens. “It’s a big concern when we start getting winds of over 50 miles an hour. We pull everything out of here, and we move crews around so they’re not in danger.”
The building sits mostly unoccupied for most of the day, not even reliable enough for firefighters to sit at desks and write reports from calls.
The city’s roughly $1 million ladder truck can’t even stay housed in the building because it’s a liability. Stevens says that's a huge problem when it comes to response times.
“In this business, every second counts,” he said.
Firefighters must drive 12 minutes round trip to get to the ladder truck at another facility.
“We don’t want that delay. We want that delay to be zero,” he said.
And those used oil-rig cabins that firefighters have been using to sleep in are also now falling apart after a new problem with the plumbing.
“So, we have to go back into the station to utilize the bathroom,” said Stevens.
As firefighter Eddy Kanduch takes a moment to recoup in the kitchen area of one of the cabins, he talks about the reality of the situation, saying the separation from the station itself bleeds into how he works with his fellow firefighters.
“You want to know your crew and build that cohesion,” he said. “So that you go into a fire or an emergency, you know each other, and you have that relationship built up.”
It’s an important part of saving a life, he says.
In 2018, when inspectors deemed the building unsafe, Stevens says they almost had an emergency of their own.
“They stepped through upper support members of the roof,” he said. “At that point they said, this inspection is over, and everyone needs to move out.”
And while he waits to hear when the bond could be on an upcoming election for residents to decide on, he reminds us that city taxpayers are already seeing an increased cost due to the unstable structure.
Every time the fire trucks roll out on a call, the weight pounds the concrete ground of a structure that was never made to be a fire station anyway, breaking down the tires and the equipment further.
“Each of these tires cost about a thousand dollars,” he said.
