Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
BURKET - The fire station for the Seward Township Fire Department in Burket is so small and crowded, part of a loft had to be removed at one point to make room for a fire truck.
Talk about a new fire station has moved forward now to an actual design, property acquisition and fundraising.
In an interview Monday afternoon in the Burket Fireman’s Training Center, recently retired Fire Chief Kevin McSherry and new Fire Chief Bryce Good spoke about the plans and need for the new station.
“We started talking about (this project) a long time ago, and we put this together. We have five of our volunteer firemen that are now professional firemen - four in Warsaw and one in Syracuse - and so I called them in and I said, ‘OK, you guys sleep in fire stations two to three nights a week.’ I said, ‘What do we need as far as sleeping quarters to accommodate the future?’” McSherry said.
The design plans, which were originally completed Feb. 29, 2024, for the 14,600-square-foot new station by RQAW/DCCM, includes four separate bedrooms, which can accommodate male or female, with isolated walls between them. There’s five garage bays two trucks deep to accommodate up to 10 vehicles. There’s ample office space to get reports written, as well as a kitchen, dayroom with dining area, laundry rooms and storage rooms. A larger room will be for training and a community center.
Five Acres
The new station will sit on 5 acres just north of the Burket Educational Center, which is a story in itself.
McSherry’s family farm is a mile east of Burket. While his grandpa was alive 30 to 35 years ago, they were coming to town to pick something up at Powell Tire in downtown Burket. When they stopped at the stop sign by Burket school, McSherry recalled his grandfather telling him, “Hey, if you ever need land to build a fire station, just tell that school board to give you that land back.” His grandfather told him it’s right on the deed that if the school doesn’t use the land for school purposes, they’re to give it back to the township because the township gave them that land originally when Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation was formed.
McSherry never forgot what his grandfather told him. When land south of Burket was not available for the new fire station, McSherry went to the county auditor’s office in the county courthouse and got a copy of the deed. On the face of the deed was exactly what his grandfather told him.
McSherry called Seward Township Trustee Aime Hoffman and told her about the deed. A title company confirmed the deed’s authenticity, and attorney Steve Snyder did some case study research that confirmed it was still legally binding.
Hoffman let McSherry tell TVSC Superintendent Blaine Conley about the deed, who then took it to his board. After some discussions, McSherry traded some of the land in the deed for some Michael R. and Karen L. Nelson had adjacently.
“We didn’t take all the land,” McSherry said, because TVSC wanted to keep part of it in case they had to enhance their septic system for the Burket Educational Center.
McSherry said they have about half of the money for the structure, and a part of the money they have for the station is because of Hoffman. The firefighters also have had a few substantial fundraisers and put that money in a CD in the bank.
The firefighters own the Burket Fireman’s Training Center, which they use for a variety of purposes, including their popular fish and tenderloin frys. The funds raised from the frys have allowed them to buy a lot of equipment over the years.
“Funding this building is not the only thing we do,” McSherry said.
He said he talked to K21 Health Foundation CEO Rich Haddad about the station plans. While K21 does not fund buildings, McSherry said, that’s not to say K21 wouldn’t help to do something else inside the station. Hoffman was setting up a meeting with the Kosciusko County Community Foundation, he said.
Good said, “We’ve got skin in this game, just amongst ourselves. We’re running emergency calls and all of this. We’re still trying to proceed forward with bettering us as a whole. So that makes our members buy into this, too. Obviously, most, if not all of us are taxpayers in this area, and we’re putting more skin in the game. We want to see something happen here, and the support from our surrounding community has been overwhelming and super, super appreciated, but it’s more than just them. We’re giving to this just as much as donations and us frying fish. There’s a lot of things that go on behind the scenes, not only to keep our day-to-day rolling, but for us to pursue stuff like this. We want to be invested in this as well.”
If anyone wants to donate toward the fire station, McSherry suggested contacting Hoffman, Good or himself.
Current Station
The current fire station, which was built in 1978 and has four bays one-truck deep, is packed and can’t get any more trucks into it. When the county snowplow comes down for a snow emergency, McSherry said, “we can’t get them in. They’ve got to park outside, and we let them run or we plug them in with a block heater.”
Good said the current station doesn’t even have floor drains, so this time of year when it’s 20 degrees or colder outside, after returning from a call, they can’t wash their trucks.
“We live without a lot of luxuries, real basic luxuries, and ultimately something like this is just going to better us, it’s going to make our equipment last longer, it’s going to make us a better department as a whole, gives us room for expansion as the years go on,” Good stated. “We’re very limited with what we have today.”
The current station also is landlocked.
“The big thing, as the fire service has evolved in years, we’re doing more and more. We’re no longer really a fire department. The majority of our calls are EMS-related, and fire service is just transitioning into ... doing more and more than we ever did, which means our trucks get bigger, we carry more stuff and we don’t have room to put anything in. We don’t even have room to make the trucks bigger, to expand that,” Good said. “The downside of that is, as we get new equipment, that means other useful equipment potentially comes off the truck to make a place for new stuff. And, again, we don’t have any place to put the old stuff.”
As for a timeline of completing the new fire station, McSherry said it’s all money-driven.
“In fact, the farmers that farm that field are going to farm that ground this year, and we won’t start anything until fall. But, we’re ready to go,” he said.
Volunteers To Paid
Good said their volunteer fire department has a roster of about 25, with McSherry adding they’re usually around 25 to 28. The new fire station will need sleeping quarters because they’re “gearing it up for paid firemen,” McSherry stated.
“It’s just harder and harder to maintain the squad that we need to do this. I hate to see it happen, but in 10 years there may not be volunteers. A lot of it has to do with what happens down state in the government. They’re making it harder and harder ‘cause the training that Bryce has taken to be a professional fireman is the same identical training. In fact, a lot of what you got to be that, you got here,” McSherry said.
Good, who took his oath as a professional firefighter with the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory in July 2024, has enhanced his training. He is one of the five firemen who were volunteers with Burket before going elsewhere to be professional.
“You about have to have your foot in a volunteer fire department door, in our county, to go career. Without being affiliated with a volunteer department, you’ve got to have Fire 1 and 2, which is about an eight-month course, to even be considered as a firefighter career-wise in our county, and that’s subject to change,” Good stated.
In places like Goshen, they have a fire academy where they hire guys off the street and give them all the training they need. “But, again, that’s a time commitment for those guys who walk in the door. They’re in training the first several months of their career. In our county, we don’t really have that,” Good said adding that the volunteer fire department provides a stepping stone to pursue the paid job.
As far as the fire department becoming a fire territory or fire district, McSherry said that’s a possibility. There’s differences between a territory and district, like how it’s set up and dismantled. Currently, there’s three fire territories in the county - Warsaw-Wayne, Turkey Creek-Syracuse and Tippecanoe-North Webster.
“We’ve looked at all of it, and extensively, and our trustee has, and still is, looking at all of it,” McSherry said. “She’s been very supportive of this.”
There’s been a little talk about forming a fire territory with Mentone, but Mentone “brings another variable” because they serve New Castle Township in Fulton County as well, McSherry said.
If a fire department with all of its services aren’t available locally, then those services will have to come from other departments like Warsaw.
“And minutes count,” McSherry said. “Right now, we’re getting pretty good service out of station 15 (CR 200S), but what if they’re busy and they’re up at Leesburg helping, or out on (U.S.) 30 someplace with a wreck? Then we’ve got to wait.”
Burket runs first responders out of its station. “We are basic life support, no transport. That’s our license,” McSherry said. Some of the Burket members are EMTs, like Good, but he can’t operate as an EMT at Burket because Burket isn’t licensed that way.
Good said, “We have a couple Advanced EMTs and those guys can start IVs, and they’re a little higher, they’re kind of a step under paramedic, but under our licensing (at Burket), they can’t do that, so you kind of have to find the reigns where you pull back and you can do what you can do. Now, Lutheran makes the scene and they can assist Lutheran EMS under Lutheran EMS.”
