CANTON – Firefighters, volunteering their time, are helping build Canton’s new fire station, which is expected to be completed late this month or in early September.
Assistant Fire Chief Mark Blanchette whose business, Blanchette Builders, was awarded the $130,000 construction project last September, said they’ve been working 16-hour days for the last two weeks.
“I have a real good team of volunteers,” Blanchette said Thursday. “You couldn’t ask for better.”
Funding for the $300,000 project was provided by a $250,000 Public Facilities Grant from the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development.
The town needs to provide a $50,000 matching share. Chief Wayne Dube said Thursday that they already had $32,000.
Then, “an anonymous donor gave us $10,000, so we only had to raise an additional $8,000,” he said.
And, although the grant stated that the station had to be completed by the end of May, Dube said he asked for, and received, an extension.
The 68-by-80-foot station beside Route 108 and the town garage is to house six firetrucks in three bays.
It will also have a training room, meeting room, kitchen, laundry room, dispatch room, restrooms, an office for the chief and a room for oxygen tanks and breathing gear, Blanchette said.
Those amenities were lacking from Canton’s previous station, a 40-by-30-foot building attached to the municipal office. That station was built in 1965, Dube said.
Canton, he said, has a call force of 21 volunteer firefighters, who not only cover Canton, but also neighboring Hartford.
“In the past, we were Hartford’s only fire protection, but, within the last five years, they got Turner and Buckfield involved,” Dube said.
He said the new station’s location allows the department to respond to more area. An open house is expected to be held in late September.
Comments are no longer available on this story