PERRY COUNTY, Pa. — From holes in the ceiling to cracks in the walls, the fire station on Cumberland Street in Duncannon is falling apart.
“We don’t have the space and we have no facilities to attract volunteers," said Chief Byron Worner of the Duncannon Fire Company.
The original building has been standing since 1910.
It used to be the old borough hall which housed jail cells in the basement.
The attached part, built in 1934, was the old Martin's store that is now where the fire department holds its meetings.
The roof leaks and there are cracks in the floor, among other issues.
The kitchen is also no longer used for outside events.
That 'Martin Building" part of the station has been condemned by the department's insurance company. It's only used for meetings and raffles.
“The biggest issue is the age and lack of size of the facility," said Chief Worner.
The back of the station, which sits on the Little Juniata Creek, shows more cracks and discoloration.
“[These buildings] weren’t built to be a fire station," explained Chief Worner. "This one building where we’re standing was built to house fire trucks but it was built in the 1950s. Fire trucks were nowhere as big as they are today.”
That’s why the department's two fire trucks are now shoehorned into the building, barely fitting next to each other.
“There’s apparatus, fire apparatus, at our township station that needs to be at this borough station for specific reasons, [but] we have no room for them," said Chief Worner.
One of those pieces of equipment is the department's boat, which is used for water rescues.
Below the two fire trucks, which are worth a combined $1.5 million, is part of the basement where steel plates are holding together a large crack caused by a flood.
“We try to keep up with it but it’s getting to be impossible now and it’s not a very good business decision to keep pumping money into a building that’s not going to last us," explained Chief Worner.
The fire company bought a lot up the street in 2022, using money strictly from fundraising.
That’s where the new station will be built.
Chief Worner told FOX43 it's important to keep the station in the same part of town, because a majority of the department's volunteers live within a few minutes of that area.
If they were to move it farther away, it would significantly impact response times.
The goal is to have the new station up and running before 2027, which happens to be the Duncannon Fire Company's 100th anniversary.
Chief Worner says municipal funding will be necessary to make the new station a reality.
The department plans to have space in the new station for firefighters to sleep, something they don't currently have.
Chief Worner hopes having better facilities will help attract more volunteers, something that many departments are struggling to do.
It's not known at this point what would happen to the current building.
“We have no idea," he said. "If somebody would want to buy it, that would probably be the first option and then we’d make decisions from there.”
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