Brooke County officials gathered Saturday, Oct. 14 to celebrate the cornerstone setting for the new $2.2 million EMS building with a ceremony from the local Masonic Fraternity.
“It’s meant to ensure that the building starts from a proper foundation, and that’s what we want to do here today. Not just with the building, but with our EMS and Brooke County,” Commissioner AJ Thomas said.
The new EMS structure will be one of the largest investments for Brooke County EMS ever made and officials are excited about it.
“The county has to acquire two sites up here, two different lots with structures on them and actually remove those structures. After we did that, we bid out the project and it came back and it’s about a $2.2 million building,” Thomas said.
Once completed, the building will have five EMS bays and administrative offices for Brooke County EMS. The two old EMS buildings will be shut down and everyone will be centralized.
“We want to make sure they work in a safe environment and have everything that they need. We’ve really undertaken a lot of investment in our emergency services in Brooke County,” he said.
“We’ll be getting results back from the DEP on whether or not we can use this dirt that they had to dig out from two abandoned fuel tanks that they found in the property. Once that’s done, we can backfill the holes and start framing it up,” Thomas said.
Officials hope the garage will be completed next year.