Fire district starts clearing site

Boards cracked, metal groaned as a backhoe tore into old buildings behind Sisters Fire Hall on Sunday, May 27. The Sisters-Camp Sherman Rural Fire Protection District has begun clearing the site for a major expansion of its facilities.

The project, which normally would cost many thousands of dollars, is all being completed with volunteer labor with the help of a number of local businesses that are chipping in to donate equipment and services. Materials harvested during the project are being either sold or recycled.

"From my perspective as the fire chief I am absolutely impressed with the commitment that the volunteers of this community have to save the taxpayers money," said Taylor Robertson, fire chief for the Sisters-Camp Sherman Rural Fire Protection District. "What has happened is our volunteers have stepped up to do the work. We have some very qualified equipment operators, and one of our fire medics is one of the best fallers in the whole area. They said, 'Hey, we want to save the taxpayers some money and do this ourselves.' And they stepped up, and we have had work parties with volunteers that have cleaned out the buildings and piled the brush.

"Every dollar that we save on demolition is another dollar that we can allocate toward the new fire station."

It is not just the volunteers from the fire district who have pitched in to help.

"Peterson CAT has donated a trackhoe to use for the project, and they are not charging us any machine time. Bear Mountain Fire has volunteered their time and equipment to come in and grind all the logging debris. Knife River has donated the use of the demo trucks that we will use to haul all the debris to the site where it will be tub ground. We are getting a lot of help from the local businesses, and we think it is wonderful," said firefighter Stuart Honeyman.

The project, which will be underway for about three more weeks, is being coordinated with the moving of the "free house" which should be relocated by June 22 according to Chief Taylor. The project is being conducted to minimally impact its neighbors.

"We are doing everything we can to be good neighbors," said Chief Robertson.

Demolition is an expensive portion of the building process and can often throw a budget out of whack.

"Demolition is a very expensive part of the construction process. Just falling the trees is probably $150 a piece, plus then they dispose of them and everything else. Then, to take a building down and dispose of it is very, very expensive. I would estimate that to have it (the Forest Service shop) done would cost around $20,000 in demolition," said Chief Robertson.

The Forest Service building has stood sentinel on the corner of the property for more years than most people can remember. Although not a historic building, it predates most of the homes in the area.

"The city owned it for quite a while after the Forest Service left, and after we acquired it we have been sharing it with the city in a friendly arrangement for the last few years because they didn't have a place to put their stuff," said Chief Robertson.

There are a little over 30 trees on the property that are being felled to make room for the expansion of the fire hall. They are being sold to help with costs, as is nearly everything that is being removed from the property.

"The better trees are being sold to Interfor in Gilchrist. The tops and junipers are being sold for pulp wood, and then we are going to recycle the roof into a fire prop (practice) that we can use for practice. All the metal is being recycled, and the building material will be recycled into hog fuel, and it is being sold to a biomass electric generation plant," said Honeyman.