Madison fire department holds open house for remodel

The city of Rexburg is growing; that means the fire department has to grow too.
But the downtown location didn’t provide enough expansion land, so the only direction to go was up.

Before the year-long development started, Madison was prepping for expansion. With more than 80 employees, the previous station was bursting at the seams.

Captain Troyce Miskin said, “Our other space just wasn’t big enough”

“With additional call volume, additional employees are needed,” Fire Chief Corey Child said. “With additional employees additional training is needed, and living accommodations, and bedding, and kitchen and everything that goes along with that.”

But they wanted to keep the fire station in the downtown area.

“Most cities, their fire departments are icons with lots of visitors to them,” Child said. “We said if we wanted to do that we have to go up with the building cause we are out of land. We’re kind of gridlocked.”

From there, the remodeled Madison Station 1 was born.

“The fire house is a home away from home; the guys are our second family,” Miskin said. “The people that we work with, we create a tight bond, so having a nice place to work just makes that all better.”
“By it’s nature fire fighting is a close-knit entity, sometimes too close is too much,” Child said. “We were definitely feeling not enough shoulder space in our old facility. So this will spread things out and give people some happy living room so to speak. So it should boost morale a little bit.”

All these benefits come at no cost to taxpayers.

“So we didn’t go to bond, we didn’t ask for extra taxes,” Child said. “We literally went out and got grants from different agencies and then saved money in our operating budgets to pull the project together. So the project was paid for before it actually started.”

Homeowner’s insurance rates for Madison County could go down as well. The fire department’s insurance rating is a three on the 10-to-one scale, one being best.