The walls of Metchosin’s fire hall may still be standing – but for how much longer is becoming an urgent question.
A feasibility study launched in 2023 recommends building a new fire hall on municipally owned land directly adjacent to the current structure – a move that would allow uninterrupted operations during construction and eliminate the need for costly retrofitting.
With early findings now in hand, council and community members are set to gather Thursday (June 5) for a special committee of the whole meeting to review the assessment and begin what Mayor Marie-Terese Little says must be a transparent, community-led conversation about the fire hall’s future.
“No decisions have been made,” Little said. “We’re still in the early process of this consultation. The intent is to proceed thoughtfully, carefully, transparently, and with the overall community’s best interests at heart.”
The facility, located at 4440 Happy Valley Rd. and first built in 1950, with additions in the 1960s and 1996, no longer meets key BC Building Code provisions – including post-disaster seismic standards for emergency service buildings – and falls short of multiple WorkSafeBC regulations for firefighter safety.
Issues include poor air quality, a lack of proper decontamination areas, and inadequate separation between living and work spaces. Even the building’s 12-foot-wide apparatus doors are outdated – modern emergency vehicles require 14 feet.
“Our current fire hall is an aging facility, and it no longer meets modern standards for essential emergency infrastructure,” Little said. “There comes a point when we have to rip off the band-aid and say it’s no longer serving these functions.”
Metchosin’s Fire Department is made up of roughly 40 volunteers and three full-time staff who provide 24/7 emergency response – and are often first on scene in medical emergencies.
“They go to all calls from stubbed toes to cardiac arrest,” Little said. “Sometimes they are there 20, 30, even 60 minutes ahead of the ambulance.”
According to Little, the current hall could still be repurposed for other municipal functions, such as administrative use or an emergency operations centre – facilities that don’t require post-disaster compliance in the scenario that they do build a new hall.
But attempting to retrofit the fire hall for continued emergency use could be expensive and logistically complicated.
“The problem with retrofitting the building is it’s going to cost the same, if not more than building a new one,” Little said. “The old structure is in such a decrepit state, it would require a huge amount of money to fix it up.”
And housing firefighters elsewhere during the work, she added, would be “awkward and expensive.”
The district currently has roughly $5 to $10 million available through reserves and other funding avenues.
The Fire Hall Steering Committee – composed of council and community members – has been involved in the process for two years.Thursday’s meeting, held jointly with the committee, will serve as a fact-finding session with opportunities for public engagement.
Another committee of the whole meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 9, to focus on financial considerations and review input from the public.
Little emphasized that community involvement will continue to be a central part of the decision-making process.
“All council and committee meetings have been open to the public – and they will remain that way,” she said.
