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STEAP Grant to Aid in Construction of Fire Garage

Improvements are on the way for the North Haven Fire Department’s Northeast Company #4, thanks to a recently awarded $400,000 grant.

The town was awarded the $427,512 Small Town Economic Assistance (STEAP) grant on Sept. 29 to aid in the design and construction of a multi-bay apparatus garage at the Washington Avenue firehouse. The grant will be matched by $106,879 in town funds.

First Selectman Mike Freda said the town is “fortunate” to have acquired the grant, which will help construct the new storage space for fire equipment. Given the firehouse’s location and the continued development of the northern part of Washington Avenue, Freda said improvements to the firehouse are critical in the event of an emergency.

“That’s an area of continued economic development and growth, and there are many more sites that I’m trying to get developed there,” said Freda. “When you have an area like that — that is going to see more explosion of growth — we want to make sure we’ve got the proper fire apparatus and equipment up there to be able to respond even more quickly to any calls for service.”

The project makes good on the vision Department Chief Paul Januszewski presented to the zoning department five years ago. He said he envisioned “a four-bay garage that would be able to house a lot of our training, equipment, and perhaps an apparatus in the future.”

The apparatus Januszewski wants to house at the new garage would be a tanker specifically for training purposes, as opposed to the current use of in-service tankers for the same reason. This would support the decreased emergency response time in the northern part of Washington Avenue.

“When an incident comes in, we now need to kind of scramble fast and put equipment back on the engine and get things ready to turn around and respond to the incident,” said Januszewski.

By housing an aging apparatus solely for training purposes at the new garage, equipment on another apparatus can remain and provide an immediate response to an emergency.

“There’s a time there that is precious that we need to make up for,” said Januszewski.

Along with equipment and the possibility of a training apparatus, Januszewski said he has “every intent of putting the Community Emergency Response Team’s (CERT) bus” at the four-bay garage since “we currently don’t have a really good place to put that team and all their equipment.”

For the garage’s design and construction, Freda said the town will be “going out to a competitive bid for this first quarter of next year.” Januszewski said the department is looking to break ground on the garage in the spring of next year.

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