Fire station roof to be replaced

Fire District 8 commissioners have decided to spend up to $290,000 to put a pitched roof on their flagship station in Valleyford, where the original flat roof collapsed Feb. 6 under a snow load.

After a May 13 public hearing, commissioners authorized use of money from a bond measure voters approved in 2000. However, Fire Chief Bill Walkup said no final decision has been made to tap the bond fund.

Walkup said about $900,000 of the $4 million bond remains unspent. The bond measure was used to build a new station at 61st Street and Palouse Highway, to buy fire trucks and to purchase land for a future station at Baltimore Road and Palouse Highway.

The remainder of the money was earmarked to buy land for another future station and, possibly, to build a storage building to protect trucks that now are parked outdoors. But commissioners decided it might be more important to prevent another roof collapse, Walkup said.

The only district patron to attend last month’s public hearing agreed, Walkup said.

He said a $588,000 insurance settlement included about $143,000 for a new flat roof, but the district’s insurance company, Continental Western, wasn’t willing to pay the additional $280,000 to $290,000 cost of a pitched roof.

Structural repairs, including rebuilding the front wall of the station, have been completed. The work included improvements, such as “shear panels” to strengthen walls against wind gusts, to bring the 1980 structure up to today’s building code.

Adding the new roof is expected to take four or five months, Walkup said. The work is to be performed by Belfor Property Restoration, which commissioners hired on an emergency basis on the evening of the collapse.

The station has been in limited use since about a week after the roof tumbled into the engine bay. Other portions of the roof remained largely intact.

Only two of the station’s usual seven trucks could return, forcing the district to rely on its other stations and mutual aid from nearby districts.

Walkup said the city of Spokane, Fire District 4 in northern Spokane County and a fire commissioner have been storing the damaged station’s displaced trucks.

No one was injured and no equipment was damaged because district officials evacuated the station about five hours before the roof came down.

“We were very fortunate that no one was injured because, certainly, the potential was there,” Walkup said.

Although nonessential district personnel weren’t present, a contractor’s crew was removing snow from the roof when it collapsed.

Walkup said firefighters had heard noises in the engine bay but couldn’t find anything wrong when they looked.

“We had a sense that things didn’t appear as they should,” Walkup said.

He said an engineer later reported that the collapse resulted from a combination of structural problems and the snow load.