Work starts on new Ward 6 fire station in Sulphur

Sulphur, LA (KPLC) - After more than two and a half years, Ward Six Fire Department in Sulphur is finally on the road to recovery. The rebuilding of Station Three has begun.

It has been a long time coming for the station. District Captain Teri Parker explains the long wait.

“We had a lot of red tape, we had to go through with our insurance company with our current building codes. We had to build the station according to the current building codes so all of that had to be allowed for,” Parker said.

But now a new and improved design is in the works, according to Project Manager Mac McDanil.

“It’s going to be state-of-the-art, it’s going to be well-built, probably one the best built fire stations in the parish. All of this has got to be cleaned up and the new site has to be prepped, before what I call the real construction and that’s the above ground construction to get started for this project,” McDanil said.

The first batch of construction items were delivered last week. This week, the work continues with demolition of left over debris from Hurricane Laura. Parker gives us more exclusive details on the new features that will be added.

“Our previous fire station could withstand up to 90-mile-per-hour wind load, well now this new one is going to withstand 150-mile-per-hour wind load and possibly even higher than that. But it’s a stronger station, we’re going to have completely cinderblock and it’s going to be a lot safer for our crews to man the station for disasters such as hurricane Laura and Delta,” Parker said.

A new reality that Parker said she could not imagine looking back, but remains grateful it has arrived.

“It’s taken more than two and a half years for us to get to this point and finally this week we saw ground breaking and were able to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.

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