At the former brush dump on Old Northwest Road in East Hampton, past the fork at Stephen Hand’s Path but before the point where Cedar Street turns into Old Northwest Road, is a construction site with pilings sticking out from the ground and payloaders moving dirt. Workers are not building another McMansion, but rather an East Hampton Fire Department substation, which is expected to lower insurance costs for residents of Northwest Woods, expand resources, and more efficiently respond to calls.
Fire Chief Gerard Turza Jr. said the $1.4 million project, known as the Northwest substation, had been decades in the making. When he served as second assistant chief several years ago, he was involved with the site plan approval for the 3,800-square-foot, one-story building. “Other chiefs before me have also reviewed the project in various planning stages, but it’s finally coming to fruition,” he said.
A small groundbreaking ceremony took place at the construction site on Sept. 18, attended by various town, village, fire, and emergency medical services officials who helped pave the way for the substation.
“When this building is up and operational, it is going to provide enhanced fire response and ambulance response to this particular district, and for that we are grateful,” Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said at the ceremony.
East Hampton Village provides fire and ambulance services to the Northwest Fire Protection District and Water Supply Protection District through a contract with the town, which leased about half an acre of land at the former brush dump to the village for the substation, for $20 a year. The village, which is financing the $1.4 million project, hired Carter-Melence, a Sound Beach firm, to build the 50-by-100-foot substation, which will house firefighting equipment and an ambulance. It will have four bays with a small office and a bathroom, and 17 parking spaces. Becky Hansen, the village administrator, said the target completion date is early 2020.
The Fire Department and the East Hampton Volunteer Ambulance Association protect an area of 31 square miles, which Chief Turza called “a very large and complex response area.” The Fire Department, which has 146 firefighters, responded to 1,016 calls last year. The E.M.S. agency has approximately 1,200 a year, with 40 volunteers and a paid paramedic on duty around the clock.
This will be the second substation for the Fire Department; there is one at East Hampton Airport for airport-response apparatus. It will be the first for E.M.S.
“The new substation will allow us to have equipment positioned closer to the areas of the Northwest Protection District, as well as other areas of our district,” Chief Turza said. “It’s enabling us to house a second tanker [used to supply water], which greatly increases our capabilities from an emergency management standpoint, and it allows us to have resources based at a different location other than having all resources at our main headquarters.”
The addition of the Northwest substation will also have a significant impact on the insurance premiums paid by residents who live more than five miles from the Fire Department headquarters on Cedar Street, Chief Turza said. Some premiums were reportedly as much as $10,000 a year. Others had difficulty getting insurance at all.
The substation is about two miles away from the firehouse, which is in the village’s emergency communications building on the corner of Cedar and North Main Streets. “It’s not that far, but the distance is a bit deceiving, and it’s strategically located within the five miles of the most distant points in the Northwest Protection District, which is what the insurance carriers look for,” the chief said.
He noted that the substation will allow some firefighters who have had trouble, especially in the summer, getting to headquarters through Cedar Street traffic, to reach the necessary apparatus faster. The substation will house a brush truck and an engine, in addition to the tanker and ambulance. The department will relocate existing equipment and potentially request new equipment in the coming years, he said, and the ambulance association will add a fourth vehicle to its fleet.
Also in the works is a communications pole at the new site to enhance both cellular and town emergency communications. The town announced in its statement that the pole is in the planning stages. The substation has been added “to the roster of locations included in East Hampton Town’s comprehensive emergency services communications upgrade project,” the statement said.
“I thank Mayor Rickenbach and all the village officials for working with the town to accomplish this vital enhancement of emergency services for residents,” said Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, “and wish to acknowledge the selfless service and professionalism of the East Hampton Fire Department’s firefighters and ambulance corps members in serving the community.”
According to the town, the cost of building the substation will be repaid through fire protection district taxes. Should the town ever discontinue its contract with the village for fire service in the Northwest Protection District, the town would assume the debt, as well as ownership of the building.