The Brazos Canyon fire explosion was a tragedy that not only ended a life but also ended up costing Rio Arriba County over $500,000 and left a vulnerable area without a permanent station for more than a year.
Because the fire station was not listed on the County’s insurance policy at the time of the explosion, the County had to pick up the $80,000 demolition and cleanup bill and the $592,580 cost of rebuilding the station. The Department was covered under the County’s “accidental death and dismemberment” policy and Department vehicles were insured, but the building itself was not insured, County Manager Lorenzo Valdez said.
Insurance did cover $108,000 of the $156,000 cost to replace the Department’s tanker truck, however.
“Fire departments from throughout the state donated gear and equipment to keep us functional,” Allard said. “Bernalillo County donated an 1,800-gallon, four-wheel drive tender (tanker) truck six weeks ago and we have a new brush truck donated by San Juan County.”
The Department has five vehicles in all and will station one of its two brush trucks near the Mundy Ranch, northeast of Brazos Canyon, to hasten responses to fires in that portion of the Department’s response area.
Since the explosion, the Department has operated out of private residences in Brazos Canyon.
“Things got busy but we were able to respond to them all,” Allard said. “This year, we’ve had 13 calls so far. Last year, we responded to 21 calls.”
While the department has moved into the new station, it is still unfurnished.
“We need shelving and desks,” Allard said. “The County’s got a stove and refrigerator.”
Construction of a new fire station was scheduled for completion in December 2008 but was beset by a series of delays.
The County took bids for the fire station reconstruction project in the summer 2008, but the low bidder was so much lower than the others that County officials worried it was unrealistic, Valdez said.
During the second round of bidding, Only Española-based Blue Sky Builders, Inc. submitted a proposal. They were awarded a $578,869 contract to build the new station by Feb. 9, 2009, according to County documents.
The contract included a $539,000 base bid budget and $33,088 in gross receipt taxes, plus an $6,781 additive alternate budget, according to County documents. The additive alternate was for a fourth bay door, County Grants and Contracts Administrator Phillip Morfin said. The main building of the station has two vehicle bays, each with separate entrance and exit bay doors. A second building has two single-door bays.
“They have more space than they had before,” Morfin said Monday. “They have doors on both sides of each bay so they can drive through now.”
The project was further delayed because steel for the new building, due at the construction site in December 2008, was not delivered until Feb. 23, 2009. Delivery problems and heavy snows caused the delays, Valdez and Blue Sky Builders Vice President Ryan Cordova said.
“We had the (concrete) pad poured in October,” Cordova said. “But we waited two months for the steel. The company we usually deal with got a different distributor, Nucor Steel, and they took longer to deliver.”
The County imposed no fines for the delays even though its contract with Blue Sky would have allowed it to impose “liquidated damages” of up to $150 per calendar day should the company fail to show substantial completion of the project by Feb. 9, 2009.
The contract exempts delays attributable to County-approved change orders from the liquidated damages provision, however.
A change in construction issued April 30, 2009, called for $13,712 in additional work on the station, including new parking bay overhead doors to allow vehicles to drive through the garage rather than backing out, new electrical circuits for the station’s water heater and power for the new overhead bay doors, under-counter lighting, a wall light switch, and exterior light switch.
The change order identifies inclement weather delays as necessitating the changes and allowed Blue Sky an additional 77 days to complete the station.
The change order also stated, “This work is essential in order to obtain all necessary inspections” — suggesting that design shortcomings rather than bad weather may have made the changes necessary.
The change order was issued 49 days after Blue Sky was to have completed the fire station. County officials could not locate a certificate of substantial completion Monday, but a state Construction Industries Division-issued certificate of occupancy signed June 9 — 119 days after the Feb. 9 deadline — was issued soon after the County’s missing certificate of substantial completion was issued, Valdez said.
“The substantial completion certificate’s there somewhere,” Valdez said, referring to Morfin’s Brazos Fire Department construction file, which was repeatedly searched for the certificate. “They completed a punch-list to complete that, and they had to do that before the certificate of occupancy is issued.”
Like the County’s certificate of substantial completion, however, the punch-list was missing Monday from the County’s Brazos Department construction file.