A year since an explosion destroyed the uninsured Brazos Canyon Fire Station, killing retired chief Michael Hayes, Rio Arriba County has yet to build a new fire station.
The Department has responded to an increasing number of calls while meeting and parking its trucks at private residences in Brazos Canyon, but Fire Chief T.J. Allard said the department is still able to do its job.
“We’ve had 21 emergency calls since the accident — almost double the rate of past years,” Allard said. “The state Fire Marshal did an inspection in April 2008 and we came out as the top department in the county (for readiness) two months after the accident.”
A litany of delays has slowed progress on the station. First, the County took bids for the fire station reconstruction project in summer 2008, but the low bidder was so much lower than the others that County officials worried it was unrealistic, County Manager Lorenzo Valdez said. So the County started over, putting out a request for proposals.
Only Española-based Blue Sky Builders, Inc. submitted a proposal, so it was awarded a contract to build the new, 2,400-square-foot fire station for $539,000.
Steel for the new building was supposed to be delivered in December but delivery problems and heavy snows caused additional 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 delivery finally arrived Dec. 23 — during a snowstorm — and near the deadline for completion.
“That day it snowed three feet in Brazos,” Cordova said. “We had to deliver it to Española instead.”
After the snowstorm, safety concerns further delayed construction, Cordova said.
One Brazos firefighter expressed irritation that the steel delivery had been scheduled for the dead of winter to Brazos Canyon, a high-elevation area between Chama and Tierra Amarilla.
“Why was it delayed into the winter?” firefighter and physician Mike Valdez said. “Why didn’t they build it in the fall? We’d have liked it up before winter. Why did the bidding process take from February to August?”
The steel was finally delivered to Brazos Feb. 23, Cordova and Valdez said.
“They’re up there now and the shell should be up in seven to 10 days,” Cordova said Tuesday. “The interior walls will be framed and complete in about three days after that. I’m sending a big crew up there to knock it out.”