A new fire station in the city’s south has been identified as a top priority, with a probable opening date of 2014. 

The new station is the cornerstone of Medicine Hat Fire Services’s 10-year strategic plan which was approved by the city’s Public Services Committee on Tuesday. The station will likely be built in the vicinity of South Ridge Drive and South Boundary Road and will serve the approximately 12,000 South Ridge residents who currently live outside the six-minute response zone — six minutes being the accepted standard for the length of time it should take a fire department to respond to a call.

Medicine Hat Fire Chief Ron Robinson said the city’s population has simply grown too quickly to keep up.

"When we take a look at whether or not we’re compliant with the existing established response guidelines, we recognize that we are stretched,” said Medicine Hat Fire Chief Ron Robinson. “We’re not getting there in time — not yet.”

City council has long been talking about the need for a new fire station in Medicine Hat, but the location that figured most prominently in those discussions was Crescent Heights. Robinson said the north part of the city is still a concern — with 7,500 people living outside the crucial six-minute zone — but the rapid population growth south of the Trans-Canada Highway makes that area the No. 1 priority.

“I think the selection of the south may surprise a number of people, because the assumption five or six years ago was that growth in the north was going to justify that (a station in Crescent Heights),” said Ald. Graham Kelly, chair of the Public Services Committee. “But it hasn’t materialized."

Robinson said the new plan is to conduct a review of the city’s population growth in 2017, with the idea that a fifth fire station may need to be built in the north. If a new station is ruled out, the Maple Avenue station might be relocated to the north side of the river.

The price tag for the new fire station is $7.5 million. The city also plans to complete $2 million of improvements at the Dunmore Road Fire Station in 2015, and will hire 20 new firefighters before 2014 to both staff the new South Ridge station and prepare for a number of looming retirements within the department.

All told, it adds up to an operating budget increase of between $1.8 and $2 million for the fire department — which works out to the equivalent of a four per cent property tax hike by 2014. But Ald. Ty Schneider said he expects Medicine Hat residents will find that acceptable.

“I think citizens will applaud the extension in public safety and quality of life,” Schneider said.

Kelly said that the plan is a good one, and aldermen don’t really have the right to quibble over location or cost when it is the firefighters who know best what they need.
“These decisions regarding the provision of emergency services should be based on technical expertise, not politics,” Kelly said.

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