By NanaimoNewsNOW Staff

Planning for new Dashwood Fire Hall heats up

Apr 13, 2019 | 5:20 PM

QUALICUM BEACH — A new fire hall to replace an aging 35-year-old facility north of Qualicum Beach is inching closer to reality.

Regional District of Nanaimo directors will vote on April 23 to advance the proposal to build a taxpayer funded $4-million hall for the Dashwood Volunteer Fire Dept.

The larger hall would replace the current facility and is slated to be built early next year, according to the Daniel Pearce, the RDN’s director of emergency services.

“We’ve done a couple of assessments over the last number of years looking at if we can retrofit the building, whether we can build onto it and those have found it’s not engineered for that add-on,” Pearce said.

The RDN provided estimates as recent as 2016 to expand and seismically upgrade the Dashwood Fire Hall would cost around $1.2-million, but Peare said unfortunately that option is not possible.

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Pearce said the larger hall would have two expanded drive-through bays and improved radio communications capabilities.

“The conceptual main hall includes additional bays, allowing all fire engines to be held inside and that’s both for their maintenance and in an emergency situation to ensure they can be used.”

The initiative will face an alternative approval process, which would derail the project if 10 per cent of area taxpayers documented their disapproval this summer.

Area G taxpayers would be responsible for hall’s new costs, which Pearce calculated would work out to $223 annually for 25-years for a home valued at $500,000.

More information on the project is available on the RDN’s Get Involved page.

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