A new home for Coram-West Glacier fire department

The Coram-West Glacier Fire Department has a new home at the corner of Highway 2 and Seville Lane.

After years of planning and fundraising, the new $1.1 million facility was finished earlier this summer.

The department will have an open house, with appropriate social distancing, on Saturday, Sept. 12, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The new hall was a long time coming, said chief Walter Tabb and secretary-treasurer Gil Jordan during a tour of the building last week.

“This is for the future,” Tabb said.

They’ve been considering a new hall in Coram for the better part of 15 years, they said. The old hall wasn’t much — it had no running water and if the power went out during an emergency — crews had to first fire up a generator and then plug it into the wall just to get the doors open.

The new hall features five bays, two of which are drive-through, a community meeting room, wheelchair accessible bathrooms, an office, a communications room, a kitchen and outside, a landing pad for the ALERT helicopter.

The project was funded through reserves the department had raised and saved up through the years and through a loan from Freedom Bank, with bank president Don Bennett coming through with the loan at a critical time in the project’s development.

The department is still lacking one thing, however — new blood.

“Now that we have this beautiful hall, we need volunteers,” Jordan said.

Five current members are over 70 years old, Jordan noted. Anyone interested just needs to show up to a meeting. They meet at 7 p.m. on the first and third Tuesday of every month at the hall.

Can’t volunteer? The department can also use financial support. The district covers 21 square miles from Coram to West Glacier all the way to Essex.

Folks don’t have to live in the district to volunteer.

They respond to more than 200 fire and medical calls a year, Tabb and Jordan noted, as well as responding with mutual aid to structure fires in Hungry Horse and Martin City and other nearby departments.

The building still needs some equipment that didn’t fit the final budget, including a boiler to heat the floors and a sprinkler system for the building. The plumbing is in for both systems. They’re also planning to add a washer and dryer.