“The big delay was electrical,” Raczkowski said. “We had to wait months for electrical panels, generators and stuff.” But, after 12 years of planning and then construction, Ham Lake finally has a shiny new fire station located on Lexington and 149th Avenue NE. “The location here is on a main thoroughfare and a good cross street,” Raczkowski said. “That’s probably the reason it was chosen… It’s definitely going to be a much quicker response. Right now it would probably take 15 minutes to get over here. Now it would probably be like five minutes to get anywhere. It’s the one part of the city that isn’t developed the most so there’s a lot of growth over in this part of town.” Raczkowski believes Fire Station 3 is going to benefit the city. “It’s an advantage to all the residents and stuff,” Raczkowski. “We won’t have a 15 minute response time where fire grows and doubles in size every minute. Instead of 15 minutes we’ve got five minutes so the fires should be a lot smaller and we can handle them a lot quicker.” The location of the new fire house will make it easier for the department to get to accidents and medical situations too. City gets another fire truck Ham Lake also has acquired another tanker pumper that can carry 2500 gallons of water and has a 1500 gallon per minute pump – which is more capacity than the city’s other fire trucks. “It was a very good bargain for us,” said Pat McGrath, a Ham Lake fire fighter. “The city has shown tremendous support for us,” Raczkowski said. “Buying the new vehicles for the station, putting up the station. We know they have our back. They show great support.” Other perks Fire Station 3 provides are a fitness room and a kitchen. “Physical fitness is important so the workout room is nice to have,” McGrath said. “Several of us workout several times a week together as firefighters. The kitchen is nice just for camaraderie before meetings, that kind of thing.” There is a total of 42 fire fighters in the Ham Lake department.
Location, location, location! New Ham Lake Fire Station in a good spot
HAM LAKE, Minn. (7/12/2024) – For Ham Lake Fire Chief Mike Raczkowski and his entire department, the waiting was the hardest part.
