A plan over five years in the making is getting closer to coming to fruition as the Blanket Volunteer Fire Department posted pictures of the construction on its Facebook page Tuesday morning.
“Chris Furry, the chief before me, started everything by purchasing the land,” said Robert Rodgers, Blanket Fire Chief. “I’ve been the chief for over five years, so this has been in the works for five-plus years, maybe almost 10.”
The first of three phases of construction on the new facility was completed in July 2019.
“The first phase was the concrete pad and we were able to get enough funds to get that taken care of and pour the concrete pad in July of last year, so a year and a half ago,” Rodgers said. “We held our fundraiser in August and did some figuring and knew we needed $10,000 to be able to build the building. To finish Phase 2 we were $10,000 short, and I can’t explain how happy I was because we normally pull in about $5,000 to $8,000 on our fundraiser, and we pulled in $12,000. That extra $2,000 went to operating expenses we have every year to run the department.”
As bad as the fire season of 2020 was locally, the efforts of volunteer fire departments throughout the county led to a rise in donations.
“The fire season we had, as much I hated it, it actually helped us,” Rodgers said. “A lot money came in to help us replace things that were torn up. When the fire season first started we thought we weren’t going to be able to build our building because we were going to have to cover maintenance costs for all of fire season. Luckily the community came together and we had funds come in from throughout the county.”
Phase 2 of the building process is the actual construction of the facility itself.
“We only have the funds right now to just put the building up,” Rodgers said. “We’re trying to build it in phases, so when we get enough money to do something we’re putting it up. We want people to see that something’s happening. When we get through with this, all we’re going to have is a shell of a building. We’re going to have doors on it and we’re going to put one truck in it because we have one truck now that we have to keep outside because it won’t fit in our building. That’s why we are building a new building. But it’s not going to have any heating in it, so we can’t move our other trucks over until we get a little more money in.”
After the building is constructed, Phase 3 will eventually begin.
“We haven’t gone so far as to look at how much money that is, but we’re guessing somewhere around $5,000 to purchase lights and heaters and whatever else we need to get all that set up, but that’s really a rough estimate, then we can move into the station,” Rodgers said. “Then we’ll still need more funds to build the offices and meeting room and everything else.
“The great thing about Phase 3 is it’s all indoors. Once we get enough money to put heating and lights in we’ll put it in. Once we get enough to frame up our offices we’ll go buy 2x4s and frame it up. It may be six months later, and we’ll put drywall up. Phase 3 isn’t going to be as bad as Phase 1 and 2.”
Those interested in donating to the new Blanket Volunteer Fire Department building can do so two ways.
“The easiest way to donate to us is to mail a donation to P.O. Box 72, Blanket, Texas 76432, or if they want we have a building fund set up at Citizens National Bank, also,” Rodgers said. “And thank you to everyone who’s donated, without you we couldn’t make this happen.”
The Blanket Volunteer Fire Department also wished to extend their thanks to Double Diamond Iron and Woodworks and Jeff Meadow and Meadow Construction for the progress that has been made on the building.
“They gave us a great deal on the building,” Rodgers said. “We wouldn’t be able to do it without them.”