VIDEO: The town of Hospers, Iowa, hopes to have enough money soon to build a new facility to house EMS and fire rescue services. But it won’t happen without community support. Fundraising organizers say this new facility is an idea 12 years in the making.
Over the last 18 months, the fundraising team for the Hospers Emergency Services Facility has been working hard on fundraising. It’s close to reaching its final goal. Mandy Boersma, Chairman of the Fundraising Committee, said, “We have the lot purchased. We’re just now hoping that we can get the money in the bank and can kind of get rolling on construction.”
The future home of Hospers Emergency Services Facility is just a block down the road from its current facility, and the price tag is $2.8 million. This decision to expand came after the ambulance service and fire department had outgrown the existing facility.
Larry Gloden is the Ambulance Director. He said, “The current facility, I would say, is 1970-something. It was a community building. We got it retrofitted into our fire station, and we’ve been operating out of there since the 90s.” Tight quarters have emergency services leaders looking at the big picture. “What it really does is give us added space that helps us with training in the wintertime. Right now, we’re a little limited in that area. There are only so many things we can do,” said Jason Overmohle, the Hospers Fire Chief.
Boersma explained some of the new features. “We have five bays right now, I believe, and this new one’s going to have seven,” she explained. “So it’ll leave room to add another truck if we need to. The brush truck, we just got that a couple of years ago, they had to do some adjusting to the current building to get everything to fit in there.”
