New Lakeville fire station to bring an end to decades of operational issues

LAKEVILLE — Contamination, communication and configuration — these operational problems have been on the minds of Lakeville Fire Department first responders for decades.

The longtime operational constraints that stem from the current Lakeville Fire Station will be eliminated with the construction of a new station. Construction of the roughly $15.7 million development, next to the Lakeville Police Department, will begin next month and is slated to be finished in 2027. 

The Lakeville Fire Department has been operating out of the same station at 346 Bedford St. since it was established in 1949. 

Fire Chief Michael O’Brien said the building was never intended to be a fire station. Taunton originally built it to serve as a water pumping station. Despite all the upgrades and modifications it's seen over the years, many issues persist.

O’Brien said limited space for the engine bays, lack of modern communication systems and contamination risks have left the department at an operational and safety disadvantage.

When O’Brien was hired in 2018, some department staff worried he wouldn’t take the job once he saw the fire station’s outdated state. After 33 years working in the fire service, he said he had never encountered a department that wasn’t proud of their station.

“Before I ever started, I felt an obligation to fix that,” O’Brien said.

“It's been to the detriment of our mission and likely the health of our firefighters for the last 50 years,” he added. “It's just never been a functional building.”

Contamination 

O’Brien said the new station will reduce contamination dangers with a new building layout, improved equipment, cleaning devices and utilities to ensure first responders avoid contamination from hazardous substances. Whether it’s bodily fluids from medical calls or carcinogens from structure fires, contaminants are a daily risk.

“One of the operational challenges is when you come from a fire, you have dirty gear,” said Deputy Chief Pam Garant. “That gear becomes a health risk with toxic, cancer-causing particles on it.”

A carcinogen-cleaning washing machine, called an extractor, is used to clean contaminated equipment, but only half of a first responder’s gear can be washed at a time. Garant said each cycle takes a couple of hours. 

To get to the extractor, personnel must walk from the engine bay, through the crew lockers, past a pullout bed — which is used daily during 24-hour shifts — and into a small room next to the only bathroom and shower in the station.

“You're bringing dirty stuff past where somebody sleeps, going through the floor where people eat — it's crazy,” said Garant. “If 10 people are at the fire, now you have a backup of a lot of gear.”

Due to the limited cleaning utilities, first responders are at risk for carcinogen exposure, and even have to wash their underclothes at home — exposing their families to the dangerous contaminants.

Garant said they plan to install a new, larger extractor at the new station next to the engine bays. The new station will also have more showers for responders to clean themselves of contaminants, and the new building layout prevents responders from traveling through the station with contaminated equipment.

O’Brien said the new station’s HVAC system will also be designed to keep carcinogens out of the living spaces — a major improvement for health and safety standards. 

Communication 

O’Brien and Garant said the communication limitations of the current station is a large disadvantage to the department, and is another major improvement coming with the new station. 

They said without a station-wide intercom system to receive vital dispatches, they must rely on pagers depending on where they are in the station. 

“If I don't have my pager on and I come down the stairs and there's a transmission, I could lose situational awareness,” Garant said. “At a modern fire station you have speakers all over, and if a call goes in and you're in the bathroom or you're in the gym — you'll hear it.” 

“If you don't have a pager, you don't hear it in this building,” she added.

Communication is a primary concern of the department, as it can greatly impact their response to life and death situations. 

“The new building is going to have a fully integrated alert system that's going to be linked to the dispatch center,” said Robert Clemens, a lieutenant who has worked at the department for 10 years. “That will make it easier to get the information we need to get out the door faster and where we need to go.”

Over the years, personnel have “jerry-rigged” temporary fixes to these problems, including wiring radios and scanners throughout the bays, bathroom and bunk rooms.

“It’s all just to have a scanner always running. Before, we were literally just using the speaker out of the engine with the window open. That was the scanner for the entire bay,” said Craig DeCosta, a firefighter medic who's been with the department for four years.

“We've kind of had to try to shoehorn things into places where they really weren’t designed for,” Clemens added.

Configuration

O’Brien said an expanded engine bay is another major improvement the new station will bring. He said he can “barely watch” personnel pull out and into the bays because of the small margin of error, and the large costs associated with repairing the multi-million dollar apparatuses.

Engines and trucks — including a roughly 11 foot, 8-inch tall Tower Engine — must be parked within inches of other apparatus and the surrounding walls. The bay’s doors measure 10 feet wide, by 12 feet tall.

Personnel have even attached foam padding to the walls to reduce the risk of shattering door windows when entering and exiting the trucks and engines.

O’Brien expects their response time to improve with the new station’s efficient bay configuration. The national standard for response times — the time between a person dialing 911 and when their wheels hit the road — is two minutes. With efficiency constraints from the current station, O’Brien said the department's current turnout time is over three minutes.

“We're going to be able to respond quicker — and that’s just such a fundamental part of our mission,” he said.

DeCosta said the last thing first responders want to think about before responding to a 911 call is damaging an apparatus.

“I'm looking forward to actually being able to get out of the doors without having to have to worry about hitting something on the way out,” DeCosta said. 

With slim margins of error, Garant said even the most experienced personnel can make mistakes in the heat of the moment.

“It's kind of like Santa Claus coming down chimneys,” Garant said. ”You’ve got to sprinkle some magic to shrink yourself. That's what we do.”

The new station

The process to construct a new and improved station started long before O’Brien’s time, he said. Retired Deputy Chief WilIiam Purcell said personnel have voiced their concerns for years, including the 33 years he spent at the station.

“The day I walked in, they were expanding one bay, and then they got this bay, and then these three. But, it was never done right. We fought with that all the time,” Purcell said.

O’Brien attributes the success in creating the new station to the support from residents and town officials. He said he wished the new station could’ve come during Purcell’s time, since Purcell and other personnel have been outspoken about these problems for years.

What's next

Town Administrator Andew Sukeforth said the building contractor is slated to begin clearing the forested land next to the police station at 323 Bedford St. in November. A groundbreaking ceremony will be held sometime shortly after. 

“While the population grows, the current station makes it tough to really meet their mission,” Sukeforth said. “I think the new station basically means we can meet the challenges of a new Lakeville.” 

The new station is projected to be completed between March and May of 2027. In the meantime, the department will continue working out of the current station.

“I can't overstate the fact of what a game changer is going to be for our ability to serve the town. Right now, everything we do is a work-around,” O’Brien said. “This is no longer the Lakeville Fire Department's initiative. This is a town of Lakeville initiative, because we all benefit from it.”