New Fire/EMS Building Grand Opening

By John Earp

This past Wednesday evening, the City of Jal held a grand opening for the brand-new Fire/Emergency Medical Services Building. The building had been under construction for the past two years, and provides a much-needed expansion of office space and organization for Jal Fire/EMS. Jal Fire/EMS Chief Whitney Moody said, “This was actually one of those things where we were running out of office space. I mean, whenever you go to a full-time crew, you need a place to do reports, you need a place to, whether it be fire reports and MS reports, or even studying for your certifications, this was much needed. We were pretty packed in the old fire station. We had made the old EMS Station kind of an office to where we would have enough space for all of us. And so, now this puts everybody under one roof, and it’s very nice. We have a file room. Everything’s so much more organized, and it’s nice to have your crew under one roof to where everybody’s on the same page.” Moody says the department is fully staffed now, with a continuing need for extra volunteers.

In addition to offices, a kitchen, sleeping quarters for firefighters, and garages for the fire trucks and ambulances, the new Fire/EMS Building includes a state-of-the-art classroom, in which the department will hold CPR classes and other fire-related clasases. Moody says she would like to start getting more involved with the kids for the summer next year, doing an explorers program, for which the classroom at the new station would be very useful. The old fire station and EMS building, which are several decades old, will still serve to help with the department’s storage needs.