The City of Whiteface is looking to build a new fire station for the volunteer fire department.
Whiteface Mayor James Soliz explained the current fire station houses fire trucks, EMS vehicles and equipment for the city. The new fire station would provide storage for EMS vehicles and fire equipment that do not fit in the existing fire station.
“The Cochran County EMS received two new ambulances and we house one of their old ambulances and they’re going to replace it with a new one, but the new one does not fit in the current bay that we have the old ambulance in,” Soliz said, “and so we’re looking to build the new fire station and to also build a separate bay for the EMS ambulance. As of right now they don’t have a place to house that ambulance and we would like to have a secure place for the fire trucks and also for the EMS ambulance.”
Soliz explained this is a new idea that is still in the development stage and the city is still looking at bids and qualifications before beginning construction.
“We don’t have any bids right now. We are currently in the request for qualifications to different companies or firms,” Soliz said. “So, we’re in the very beginning stages of this to see if it’s even something that’s going to be feasible. We don’t want to put anymore strain on the citizens financially. If we can do this through grants, we would like to do it through grants.”
The City of Whiteface is currently looking for grants to build the fire station instead of placing the expense on the citizens.
“We are in the process of looking for grants for this,” Soliz said. “We don’t have any grants in the process right now though, but we are currently looking for grants for any kind of financial assistance in this.”
Soliz explained the objective is to increase community safety and resources available for the rural community.
“We believe that the objective of this project is just to increase the community safety and to offer improved facilities for firefighting, for training, for the emergency response for our community and also for the rural citizens in our county,” Soliz said, “and also to have it as a resource for citizens in any type of crisis or natural disaster and to also use it for educational purposes for our school that we have here.”
Soliz is expecting the new fire station to improve the quality of infrastructure in the city and bring in new volunteer firefighters.
“Our main goal is to just provide as much safety and good infrastructure for the for the city,” Soliz said. “We believe that having a new facility like this is gonna enhance that. We think having a better facility where we can do more training and better training will bring in more volunteers to help us.”
The volunteer fire department will also be able to expand the explorer program and aide those wanting to become firefighters or EMS responders.
“We also have a program for junior firefighters that we run, it’s an explorer program and we believe that this is gonna help our children’s futures if they wanna go into firefighting, EMS or any kind of first responder,” Soliz said.
The City of Whiteface will further discuss the possibility of building the fire station at the upcoming city council meeting next month.
“We are in the very beginning stages of this,” Soliz said. “Hopefully we can get things going. I’ll have more information as we move on. We have a City Council meeting coming up next month where we’re going to discuss more about this.”