Fire chief makes case for new digs

Plans for building a new fire and ambulance station in Cloquet are not new. But now there is a revived sense of urgency to the idea, following a Jan. 15 vote by the Cloquet Area Fire District board on its intent to issue $18.8 million in bonds while calling for a public hearing on a new facility, to be built on 13 acres of donated land off 22nd Road across the street from Sappi. Board members and CAFD chief Jesse Buhs say the hearing on Feb. 12 is hugely important. They want the community to weigh in.

Buhs said the current building has now outlived its useful life. Yes, something old can be updated, but the current building sits in the middle of a residential neighborhood with no room to grow, he said. They've made some improvements in recent years, but have delayed big-ticket spending.

"Our board has been hesitant to move forward on this project for years because of the cost," said Buhs, who worked his way up from firefighter to fire chief over the past 27 years. "But the inflationary increase has been pretty significant. And now we're faced with a more dire need because of the condition of this building."

Costs to build keep climbing, he said, adding to the urgency.

The fire district is trying to get the state to fund as much as half of a new building, and also seeking multiple grants. But Buhs feels the district can't afford to sit in limbo any longer. And he thinks the service is worth it.

"We have something in this region that's pretty exceptional," he said.

"Not every smaller community has that full-time contingent of firefighters that can respond immediately," Buhs said. "They don't have an advanced life support ambulance [service] that has the depth to respond to three or four calls all at once."

The Pine Knot News sat down with Buhs earlier this week to talk about what's happening and why he believes the district needs a new building now.

PKN: What is the area that CAFD serves for fire and ambulance?

Jesse Buhs: We serve about 275 square miles for ambulance. The fire response area is the cities of Cloquet and Scanlon, plus Perch Lake and Brevator townships. We also have a contract with the Fond du Lac Band [for fire], so that extends our coverage area across whatever properties they own in the region.

PKN: How has demand changed for fire and ambulance services since the Cloquet Area Fire District formed?

Buhs: In 2009 [the first year of the CAFD] there were 2,039 emergency incidents. In 2024, there were 3,349 emergency incidents, an increase of just under 70 percent.

A lot of that increase has to do with the demographics of our residents. We've got an aging population. We've also seen the impacts of drug use and drug abuse, and we've seen people that have started to use the ambulance as kind of a primary health care option, rather than trying to get to an emergency room or find transportation to an emergency room.

PKN: How many people did it take to staff the Cloquet fire department versus now?

Buhs: When I started, there were a total of six people per shift. Now we have shifts of 10. The 24-hour shift is still the most economical way to provide 24/7, 365 days of coverage.

PKN: What kinds of ambulance services are there, and what does CAFD offer?

Buhs: There's Advanced Life Support and Basic Life Support. CAFD offers ALS, while most volunteer ambulance services offer BLS. While both provide lifesaving techniques during an emergency, they have key differences, including the level of care, the training required, the equipment used, and the treatment setting. BLS focuses on giving immediate care at the scene in order to stabilize and support life functions through basic techniques like CPR, splinting fractures, and/or the use of an AED. ALS offers a higher level of care, like advanced airway management, IV access, medication administration, pain management and advanced cardiac life support.

PKN: CAFD used to share this building with the Cloquet police. How did the CAFD change its use of the building after the police moved and it became yours?

Buhs: We gained a bit more space, but that space was immediately consumed by moving our administration from the Scanlon location over here. Having our administration next to our primary base of operations helps with the efficiency and communication and just the ability to manage the ongoing operations of the district. However, it didn't help us with the operational space challenges that we have, including adequate garage space. [We can't always] buy vehicles that meet the needs of the community. It causes us to buy vehicles that fit within the certain spaces that we have.

PKN: What modifications have you made to this building and fire district configuration since then?

Buhs: When we closed Station 3 in Scanlan, we brought some of the equipment here, which meant we were able to reduce our fleet of apparatus by one large fire truck. It made us a little more efficient, but it also added more staff, more demand, more gear and more equipment into this building. A new station will be able to adequately house the operations of what used to be both the Scanlan and Cloquet stations.

PKN: What would a new building offer that you don't have here?

Buhs: Space. Room so that we can pull out our ambulance stretchers to clean, decontaminate and restock the ambulance - because we are bumper to bumper now and respond to roughly 2,800 ambulance calls per year. ... We carry our firefighting gear to load on the ambulance so we're available for a fire call. It is to the point where it's a bit dangerous, and it's slower. The new station will have a design that's made for efficient travel in the building, so that you're as close to your apparatus as possible, it will also have supply rooms close at hand. Efficiency will be built in.

Staff safety, health and wellness is a huge issue. Carcinogens and toxins come back with you after a fire. We have invested in a new vehicle exhaust system now and we can take most of it with us if we build a new station. Now we have three different locations for our firefighting gear and they're all just scattered throughout the building.

Another big component is just how the HVAC system is controlled in the building. New stations have a controlled environment where the firefighting air packs, turnout gear, tools and equipment are stored, and it doesn't allow those toxins and carcinogens to travel throughout the rest of the building.

Mental health is also part of wellness. We will have physical fitness space in a new building. We would have quiet space where people can decompress, process what they've seen, what they've heard, what they've had to deal with, space where people are away from some of the firefighting equipment and some of the stressors of the job.

Putting all of that together, you need space, and we just have utilized every square inch of this building in a way that doesn't allow us to expand.

PKN: What about adding on to the current building?

Buhs: Space is also a factor in training. For us, in order to train, we have to take multiple pieces of equipment - at least two ambulances, a fire truck and our rescue truck - and we have to do this parade to a training site. At the location we're proposing, we can develop vehicle extrication training spaces and other firefighting simulations onsite.

If we were to try and accomplish something like that here, we couldn't: we're built into a hillside in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

Also, to address all of the issues in this building, you would have to basically move our entire operation out for a complete revamp. You'd have to find a new place to operate so you could answer those 3,500-ish emergency responses a year with 10 staff and all of your administration. Even if we could find a space that worked for a year, it would cost a significant amount of money to rent the space, build it out so it was functional as a fire station, and then we'd be back in a place where we're still limited by geography. We just don't believe that this is a viable option for us long term.

PKN: In what other ways would a new building be a game changer for the fire district?

Buhs: Everywhere I go, we're talking about challenges in providing ambulance service. It's staffing and the cost of ambulances and equipment. It's the increased call volume. And so one potential is additional consolidation of services. This new facility plays into that, but it also meets a lot of our needs, as far as just creating a more efficient system.

Also, when it comes to recruitment and retention, the first thing a new prospective firefighter paramedic sees when they come here is that we have this old, small building that doesn't have a lot of the modern safety and health and wellness features of a new fire station. They're going to see that as how we invest in our staff. Remember, one-third of our staff's lives are spent here. This is their second home. It's important they have a place to relax, to eat, to rest, to recuperate, and then be ready to respond again.

PKN: Would any of the other CAFD buildings change if you built a new Station 1?

Buhs: We lease Station 2 in Perch Lake Township and two buildings in Brevator: one is Station 4 and the other is essentially storage right now. We would still need all those for strategic placement of equipment and staff for response.

PKN: The state keeps tweaking the legislation for fire districts. What else needs to happen to make these consolidated districts a viable option for communities?

Buhs: When you form a special taxing district, it essentially removes you from your township or your city. So there's no local government aid, no [federal or state funding or grants]. It's all centered upon your tax levy. State Sen. Jason Rarick proposed a bill last session that essentially would establish [annual] state aid for special districts. It would apply to our three communities - Cloquet, Moose Lake and Cromwell - and any new districts that are formed.

We are also pursuing state bonding money and capital bonding dollars for the facilities project again. We've been stymied because we've been bumped out of that bill and last year they failed to pass a bonding bill.

PKN: If the board votes next month to bond for $18.8 million, will that impact your chances at being included in the bonding bill? What is the timeline for bonding?

Buhs: Our lobbyist assured me it will not. The board is planning to vote [Feb. 19] - after hearing from the community [during a 6 p.m. Feb. 12 public hearing at the Carlton County Government Services building] - because that will trigger a 30-day referendum period. If we were to wait to vote until May, then the referendum period would be triggered then. You will probably see a pause after February anyway, because we still have a significant amount of architectural redesign work to do since we shaved almost 8,000 square feet off the original drawing. If we move forward, breaking ground in fall is an aggressive schedule, but it will allow us to benefit from contractors who want to have work through the winter (better pricing) and it'll also allow us to avoid more inflation in spring 2026.

PKN: Is there anything else you would like to say to our readers?

Buhs: The biggest thing driving us is just that we have to make a decision, and making a decision to stay [in this building] doesn't set us up for long-term sustainability, or really the quality future of service delivery for the region.

What we have here is on the higher end of services throughout the entire state. A smaller community with basic life support volunteer services is doing good to get one ambulance out the door, but a second call won't be answered by them. It'll be a neighboring community, maybe 20-30 miles away.

I'll argue that it's even better here than a lot of the areas in the metro, because they ... have such a high call volume that the next ambulance might be in the hospital dropping a patient off, and so it might take them longer to get to their community members than ours.

It would be hard to consider taking a step back from that to save some of the cost of the service.

There's some people that aren't going to be happy about the costs, but those people that have benefited from our service - who have had their lives saved, the life of a loved one saved, or a fire that got put out when it was small and their home was saved - they would argue it's worth every penny.

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Meetings, public hearing coming

The Cloquet Area Fire District board will hold a series of town hall meetings Feb. 3-6 to inform the public and get feedback on plans to bond for a new $18 million fire station in Cloquet. Meetings will take place in member communities at 6 p.m., starting with the Cloquet Public Library on Feb. 3, Perch Lake Feb. 4, Thomson Township Feb. 5, and Brevator on Feb. 6. A formal public hearing will be held at 6 p.m. Feb. 12 at the Carlton County Government Services building (former Cloquet city hall) at 1307 Cloquet Ave., Cloquet.