Bois D'Arc Fire Protection District celebrates new station

The Bois D’arc Fire Protection District celebrated the opening of their new fire station on Saturday, Oct. 1, with a flag-raising ceremony led by members of the Ash Grove FFA, and a presentation by Parish Witt, board president of the fire district, in which he gave a brief history of the entity and recognized some of the notable people who had served. Afterwards, an open house was held at the station, during which visitors could come and tour the building. An estimated 100 people came to the fire station throughout the day.

Bigger building, better construction means better response times, better training
Witt said that the new fire station, which is 7,200-square feet in size, offers the firefighters several advantages which will help them to better serve the people in the fire protection district, not the least of which is size.
“We have a better training room that we can train our people in and do classes and stuff,” he said. “We also have way more room out here in the building, so now we don't have our trucks double-stacked indoors. And, we actually had a fifth truck that we were housing at another facility because we had nowhere to keep it, so we had to have people drive way out of the way just to go get a truck to respond to a call. And so now, we actually have that (truck) in our building where we can keep it, and so that helps with our response times.”
Not only is the new building larger, said Witt, but it is also better suited for training fire fighters than the old building.
“We have better insulation in our building than what we had before,” he said. “We have air-conditioned classrooms and offices now, (and) more room outside for our trainings in our scenarios that we do (to prepare for) those type of things.”

Taxpayer support made new building possible
Taxpayers in the fire protection district voted in April of 2019 to approve a 12-cent property tax levy to pay for the new fire station, as well as new fire trucks; construction on the building began the following year. The new station cost $500,000 to build, mostly for the cost of materials; Witt said the firefighters themselves built the station to cut down on costs. He also said the old fire station would be sold, and the money from the sale would go towards paying down the cost of the new fire station.
He added that the district is grateful to the people of Bois D’arc for their support in building the new fire station.
“I would just like to really thank the community for their support,” he said. “You know, if it wasn't for the community’s support, and the community backing the tax rate increase that we did a few years ago, we wouldn't have been able to do this. And, we hope that the community is proud of their new building, and we hope that the community takes pride in what we've done.”