A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Aug. 22 to commemorate the opening of the Herculaneum Fire Department’s newly constructed boathouse. The Fire Department stores its “safe boat” in the boathouse, at 400 Riverport Way.
Herculaneum Fire Chief Kevin Baker said the Fire Department uses its 25-foot “safe boat” to respond to emergencies on the Mississippi River. He said the district has had the safe boat since 2013 or 2014 and has used it to respond to a variety of emergencies, like barge fires, drownings, overturned boats, collisions and on-vessel injuries.
Baker said Herculaneum Fire and the Rock Community Fire Protection District are the only two firefighting agencies in Jefferson County with rescue boats stored on the Mississippi River to respond to emergencies. Rock Community has a boathouse similar to the one built recently in Herculaneum.
“With the one in Arnold and now one in Herculaneum, that gives us very good response capabilities on the Mississippi through Jefferson County,” Baker said. “So while this is an asset for Herculaneum, this is really an asset for Jefferson County as a whole.”
He said the boathouse was much needed to help reduce response times to emergencies on the river. The department’s boat had been housed atop a trailer in the firehouse, at 151 Riverview Plaza Drive near the Buchheit store in Herculaneum.
When the Fire Department got calls in the past to respond to an emergency on the river, Baker said, firefighters had to drive the boat to Hug’s Landing in Crystal City, the nearest place to put a boat in, and unstrap it from the trailer. That meant it typically took about 45 minutes for the Fire Department to respond to the scene of a water emergency.
Baker said having a boathouse on the Mississippi will cut down the response time to a water emergency, probably to less than 10 minutes.
He said the rescue boat typically gets more usage in the summer and less in the winter.
“Sometimes we’re out there two or three times a month. Sometimes we’re not out there at all,” Baker said. “We do training at least every two months.”
Baker said it cost just over $596,000 to build the boathouse, and the Fire Department received a $450,000 federal Department of Homeland Security Port Security Grant that paid for the majority of the cost. The grant required a $150,000 local match, which the city could not afford. However, Baker said he reached out to the Jefferson County Port Authority to ask for help, and it covered the remaining cost.
The boathouse is considered a “dry dock” because the boat is stored on a lift above the water.
Jefferson County Port Authority Executive Director Cyndi Buchheit-Courtway was at the ribbon cutting to present the fire department with a $150,000 check.
“On behalf of the Jefferson County Port Authority, we’re proud to partner with the Herculaneum Fire Department to bring safety to our riverfront,” Buchheit-Courtway said. “If they can save one life, it’s worth the money that we invested in the project. Having it here is going to save time and that could be the difference between life and death.”
Material Sales of St. Louis built the 60-by-40-foot boathouse.
Baker said while the building may look like a simple structure, the price tag reflects its true value.
“The material is actually barge material, so it is made for the Mississippi River,” he said. “We had a skiff out here for a couple of years. It was being destroyed. The Mississippi is a very unforgiving river.”
In addition to the boathouse being built with hardier materials, it is attached to a dock, which allows the boathouse to rise and fall as the river depth changes. The dock and boathouse also can move forward and backwards from the riverbank, allowing access to the boathouse even in low water.
Baker said the Fire Department has received other grants over the years that have allowed the department to outfit the rescue boat with technology, such as radar, sonar, side-scan sonar, night vision and forward-looking infrared (FLIR). The boathouse also has security cameras with artificial intelligence capabilities.
“We’ve been very fortunate to get grants from FEMA. I think we’re up to almost $4 million in grant money now from FEMA since 2003,” Baker said. “There’s no way our city could have done it without the port security grants.”
Herculaneum Mayor Ryan Wright said he was grateful to have Baker working for the city and using his knowledge to bring improvements to the city.
“A lot of people don’t even touch these grants, or don’t even know where to find them. So it’s really about knowledge and knowing where to go, and he’s taken the time to learn that,” Wright said. “Kevin has worked for years studying grants and going through the political process to get the money for it. This is amazing. He worked really hard on this.”
Baker said he was glad to see his hard work pay off.
“This is a huge undertaking,” he said. “By the time we do the grant process, do the bid, select a vendor to build and then do the build process, it’s been a three-to-four-year process. So it’s been a long time coming. It’s nice to see your hard work come to fruition finally.”