WFD’s Moody St. Fire Station project moves forward

Feb. 19--The future of the Waltham fire department is scheduled for a great leap forward Saturday as the Young Building at 509 Moody St. adjacent to the current fire station, will be demolished. The new station will be built on the newly vacated lot, incorporating the current station in its redesign.

The demolition is dependent on the cutting and capping of the gas service, expected to be completed in time.

If the demolition is completed Saturday, the site will have new fencing and traffic patterns will be limited on Maple Street--consisting of one-lane for traffic between Moody Street and Adams Street during the demolition which will start after 8:30 a.m.

There will be measures taken accounting for dust, pedestrian traffic as well as keeping the impact on surrounding businesses to a minimum, according to the Waltham Fire Department.

There will be roughly two weeks spent removing debris before Phase 1 of the project begins in earnest.

The land was acquired around five or six years ago, according to Mayor Jeannette McCarthy.

"It's needed," she said. "This is a very highly populated, dense area of the city with tremendous amount of people living there."

A phased process

Phase 1 includes removing the deputy quarters in the back of the current building to create space. Phase 2 involves new construction of the new building, which includes a 4,000-square foot addition to the old building.

"We're really trying to over communicate this," said Cathyann Harris, Ward 8 Councillor for Waltham. "When the fence goes up and the building comes down this is going to become pretty real pretty rapidly. We want the community to know that we're trying to inform them as much as possible what the impacts are going to be and we're trying to remediate those impacts."

The new building will have seven bays for fire trucks, all of which will be 14 feet wide to accommodate modern trucks and equipment, says Waltham Fire Chief Thomas MacInnis.

The old building was built in the 1800s and has not had any real renovation since the 1980s. It actually burned down in 1900 and was rebuilt a year later. The new building will offer the department flexibility it has not had, says Tim Pratt, deputy chief of fire training.

"This station is built with the future in mind," he said. "If we have to use some of the space for something else it's there. I think that was very forward thinking on the part of the committee and the mayor."

Four of the bays will be used on a regular basis. Three will be used to store fire apparatus.

Phase 1 to Phase 2 of the project is expected to take about a year and a half to complete.

Construction is anticipated to start by late spring.

South side service

Construction will not disrupt fire service to the south side of Waltham.

"At no time are we going to have a lack of services or offline services," Harris said. "The reason for the phased construction is to ensure the appropriate coverage for the south side."

Other fire departments and their processes in building new stations were evaluated in the creation of Waltham's plans.

"We were looking for the mistakes that they made so we don't make the same ones," MacInnis said. "We're looking for materials in this building that will last. We're not going to come in in five years and replace flooring and wall coverings."

Modernizing the WFD

There are a total of 166 Waltham firefighters. The new building completes an effort to upgrade the department in regards to clean practices, MacInnis says.

The department has added washers and dryers to extract chemicals from turnout gear, outfitted firefighters with a second suit of gear allowing for appropriate cleaning of each to keep firefighters safe from toxins, and the culture of the department has shifted over the last decade to prioritize decontamination.

"The goal is to make it a clean station," he said. "That's one of my priorities because old fire stations are very dirty. Keeping the trucks and the gear away from the living quarters is key right now. It's a problem throughout the country [in regards to] cancer in the fire service and its really hit in the last ten years."

The rise of cancer diagnoses across the industry has fueled these changes, MacInnis says.

"The culture of the fire service has changed drastically as it comes to smoke," he said. "It's taken time because the old timers, it's hard getting it through their head that this is the way we have to do it but that's the way these guys are being taught in the academy."

The new fire station is a long-term investment, MacInnis says.

"We built this for at least 50 years," he said. "This space is going to suit us for a long time."

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