THUNDER BAY — Neebing Fire and Emergency Services’ municipal office will build a $1.38 million decontamination facility.
The construction of the 4,000-square-foot building will begin in August. It will work to ensure responders meet the highest standards of health and safety as the municipality’s emergency calls increase.
“To keep everybody safe, we have to go through a very rigorous decontamination procedure,” said Mark Shruiff, the acting fire chief for Neebing Emergency Services.
Following any firefighting, whether it's cars, structures or even wildland fires, he explained gear becomes contaminated with carcinogens in the forms of soot or different toxins.
With the alarming rise in presumptive cancer diagnoses within the fire service due to these carcinogens, Shruiff said decontamination and firefighter welfare are taking centre stage.
“I sincerely hope (diagnoses decrease) and that should be across the entire fire service, not just with Neebing, so we're doing this pre-emptively to make sure that we don't get those diagnoses,” said Shruiff.
Where the department currently takes up to or more than 18 hours to decontaminate, Shruiff added, the new facility will allow members not only to return to a ready state within as little as two hours but with all aspects of the department passing through this building, it will reach an efficiency not previously attainable.
This pressurized decontamination area will have specialized cleaning equipment, including gear washing machines, proper dryers and decontamination showers.
The facility will also create a wash bay area for fire trucks and equipment, install 10,000-gallon water storage tanks and add a clean area to store personal gear, sensitive equipment and permanent records.
Beyond decontamination procedures, Shruiff said the new structure will also provide an additional training area for Neebing emergency services personnel.
“Interior search and rescue, ladder drills, medical first response scenarios, all aspects of our training. We'll take the theory that we learned down the hall, review it and without leaving the building, we can apply it to an indoor setting," said Shruiff.
He said this would remove the inclement weather aspect of training, allowing them to fine-tune skills in a controlled environment before implementing them outdoors in training scenarios and, ultimately, emergencies.
“I'd like just to say that this is a very huge boost for our municipality. We're really, really excited about it. It's been a long time coming and I think that it's just up from here,” said Shruiff.
It took the culmination of six years of work for the Neebing council to have their application for the project go in.
Gordon Cuthbertson, the counsellor at large for the municipality of Neebing, said they knew they made the shortlist about a year ago and still had more work to do, but having worked that long, knowing Neebing needs this and finally getting the announcement that they were going to get the expansion was fantastic.
“It’s fantastic it’s going to be on this site. Their offices are already in this building and we’ve been working on how to tie the two together, so it’ll be a great thing for the municipality because they’ll see it driving down the road,” said Cuthbertson.
Officials also hope that, with the fire service nationwide as a whole struggling to get recruitment numbers up, the new facility will help.
As a completely volunteer fire department, Cuthbertson said it'll encourage other people to volunteer and join now that people volunteering know that coming back from a particular fire they’ll be decontaminated properly and won't be taking that home.
“We want more people to move out to Neebing and they'll be able to see that we have a working fire department out here. It's a volunteer, but still, when there's an emergency in Neebing, our fire department gets there before the ambulance gets there, from town,” said Cuthbertson.
“So they're a very active group and so move to Thunder Bay. We will take care of you and provide you with some safety in the event of a fire catastrophe.”
The building redesign will relocate the existing playground to a new location next to Blake Hall.
The project funding is from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation and is expected to be completed by March 2026.
