By John Latimer
The Lebanon Daily News
LEBANON COUNTY, Pa. — Officials from the Lebanon County Firefighters Association approached the Lebanon County commissioners on Thursday to ask for help in funding the construction of a new burn building to aid in training.
The current building, located at the fire training center behind the Lebanon County Career and Technology Center in South Lebanon Township, is no longer safe to use and has been closed since 2009, explained Lebanon Fire Commissioner Duane Trautman, who serves as the association’s recording secretary.
The three-story concrete block burn building was constructed in 1999 at a cost of $191,000, Trautman said. Hard use and a foundation that could not support the weight of the building caused leaks that soaked the insulation behind the fire tiles, making the structure unusable.
The association formed a committee two years ago to determine whether repairing the old building or constructing a new one would make more sense. After visiting other burn buildings and speaking with engineers and industry professionals, Trautman told the commissioners, constructing a new burn building at the fire center is the sensible option.
The cost of constructing a new two-story building with seven burn rooms has been estimated at $635,000, not including demolition of the existing building, he said. Savings of $30,000 are possible if the tiles from the existing building are salvageable.
The firefighters association is pledging $100,000 and seeking assistance from the county for additional funding. Federal grants are not an option because they do not pay for brick-and-mortar projects, Trautman said. The only state grants the association would qualify for would contribute $15,000 at most.
“Lebanon County for many years provided an excellent training facility, and we’ve lost our ability to take that training up to the top,” Trautman said. “I guess we have to decide as a county what level of training we are going to offer.”
The commissioners did not take any action on the request, but Commissioner Bill Carpenter suggested the county might be willing to put up $250,000 as a match if the association could raise an equal amount from the county’s 25 organized municipalities.
“If they all gave $25,000 we would have it made,” he said.
Before agreeing to any deal, Carpenter said, it would need to be discussed with the field of four candidates running for commissioner, three of whom will comprise the new board in 2012.
Carpenter also suggested that money for the project could come from the Affordable Housing Fund. That account is funded with a portion of the transfer fees collected with every real estate transaction in the county.
Administrator Jamie Wolgemuth said Lebanon County Redevelopment executive director Ray Bender, who oversees the fund, would have to be consulted to determine if such a financing arrangement could be made.
Without a burn building, county firefighters have been forced to travel to Lancaster and Dauphin counties to get live-fire training, said Chuck Killian, chairman of the association’s equipment and building committee. The cost of such training is between $200 and $300 and is paid for by the volunteers or their companies.
When the county’s burn building was in working order, firefighters from surrounding counties used to pay to train at it, said Killian, who is a volunteer with the Lebanon Fire Department.
The Lebanon County Firefighters Association is accepting donations for the burn building. Checks made out to the association can be mailed to P.O. Box 1351, Lebanon, PA 17042.
Also, in the aftermath of Tuesday’s unusual 5.8 magnitude earthquake, PennDOT officials have asked the county to inspect a bridge in Bethel Township with a type of support construction that makes it more susceptible to earthquake damage, chief administrator Jamie Wolgemuth said at Thursday’s county commissioners meeting.
The bridge, located on Golf Road, showed no sign of damage, Wolgemuth said.
All bridges in the county are inspected on a regular schedule, he added. Recently the county agreed to a five-year contract with Wilson Consulting of Mechanicsburg to do the inspections at a cost of $626,000. Of that amount, 80 percent, or about $500,000, will be reimbursed by the Federal Highway Administration. The remainder will be paid from the county’s liquid fuel funds.
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