New bells & whistles

By John Crane

Published: June 22, 2008

To say Tunstall Fire & Rescue has a new home would be an understatement.

The 46-year-old department moved from a dank, diesel-fumed building on Mount Cross Road to a brand-new location at 740 Tunstall High Road last weekend, next to Tunstall High School.

Now the 55-volunteer unit has almost twice the space and a state-of-the-art facility where they no longer have to squeeze between trucks in the bays or park engines at scattered locations to make way for community events at the station. The new 10,400-square-foot station also has more office space and sits on six times more land — about three acres — than the previous structure.

“We had two desks everybody worked out of (before),” Bob Thurman, Tunstall Fire & Rescue’s spokesman and chaplain, said.

Tunstall Fire & Rescue’s previous location, in the 8300 block of Mount Cross Road, was 5,600 square feet. The department had been there since the early 1970s.

The new site also has separate dorms for male and female volunteers, a kitchen 10 times larger than before, and a community meeting room where constituents can vote without the department having to relocate their trucks for space, Thurman said.

However, the most vital outcome of the upgrade will be improved safety, Thurman said. The new home improves morale for volunteers, he said.

In the old location, volunteers either used combination or conventional key locks to enter the building. Now all they have to do is swipe a card, reducing time to get into the building. Also, volunteers had to pull trucks out of the old, one-way bays to get to the needed vehicles for calls, eating away critical minutes, Thurman said. With openings on both sides of the new structure, firefighters can just hop in and pull out.

Tunstall Fire & Rescue averages 35 to 45 calls a month, mostly EMT calls, Thurman said. The department received 573 calls in 2007, with 245 so far this year, he said.

Daniel Builders LLC began construction in July 2007 and completed their contract in mid-April. Volunteer firefighters pitched in labor for the project, laying tile in the kitchen, pouring concrete, erecting flagpoles and performing other tasks, Thurman said. The $800,000 project was funded through a loan backed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Thurman credited Assistant Fire Chief Jeff Guill with contributing the most effort to the project, working 12-hours getting donations and organizing help.

“He has really been the driving force behind this building,” Thurman said.

An open house will be held at the station from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. July 19, with a ribbon-cutting at 10 a.m.

• Contact John R. Crane at

or (434) 791-7987.