In order to get to the ladder that leads up to the old hose tower, Onset Fire Chief Ray Goodwin must sidle past a janitorial bucket and move some shovels, before squeezing into the small space behind the random jumble of tools to ascend the ladder.

The small area, like many other spaces in the almost 70-year-old Onset Fire Station, has become a catch-all storage space for the ever-growing amount of tools and equipment a modern fire station needs to function, Goodwin said. The department will ask voters to approve the transfer of $325,000 from free cash to help fund a new fire station at the annual Onset Fire District Meeting.

The space issue was brought to a head at the last district meeting, when the voters approved the purchase of a new ladder truck, Prudential Committee Chairman Charlie Klueber said. The hiccup? The truck does not fit inside the current fire station, and will have to be housed off-site at the Onset Water Department.

“Even with the existing equipment, it’s a challenge,” Klueber said. “Add a little snow, and you have some real problems getting out.”

Goodwin said the smaller facility, which measures about 180 feet by 40 feet, and has two floors, was perfectly fine in the past, when there were only 800 fires per year. Nowadays, he said, there are between 1,800 to 2,000 fires per year. With the increased need for service comes an increased need for equipment -- but the space in which the necessary equipment can be stored is static.

“When the station was first built, it was cavernous,” Goodwin said. “There was nothing in it.”

But the building is not cavernous, anymore. As time has passed, it has become necessary to build little rooms off the main area, encroaching upon the central space. And everyone feels the squeeze: the sleeping area for those firefighters who must take the night shift sometimes sees up to 20 firefighters, sleeping in shifts, in a night.

“We call it the frog pond, because everyone is snoring,” Goodwin joked.

Like the space, much of the equipment, though still in use, is outdated, Goodwin said. For the most part, the station relies on the knowledge of its members to fix and sometimes even update equipment, when necessary, in order to cut costs.

“You have to weigh the value of keeping a system in play, versus scrapping it,” Goodwin said.

Goodwin estimated that the department spends several thousand dollars on station maintenance alone, but that, sometimes, it has to make do with placing band-aids on certain problems.

“You’ve got the trucks versus the size of the doors -- we jokingly call these our ‘blowout panels’,” Goodwin said, slapping a deeply-grooved wooden panel nailed to the side of one of the garage’s frames. “We cut the doors here so, when they get ripped off, we can just replace that one piece of wood."

“It depends on how warm it is, but, when [the wall] expands, you can see the sunlight through the cracks in the wall,” Goodwin continued, gesturing to a crack running along the interior of the same garage. “We caulk them every now and again.”

Goodwin said he is committed to community involvement, and wants the people his department serves to understand exactly why the department needs the extra space. He and Klueber hope at least two citizens sign up for the Fire Station Building Committee that will oversee the research and planning for the new station space.

But the community’s response has been disappointing, Klueber said. The only responses the committee has gotten have been from current or former employees of the district, which does not project the community angle Klueber and Goodwin hope for.

“In the end, the project is going to come before the voters,” Klueber said. “If they think it’s just a pipe dream by the members of the department, it’s less likely to pass at a district meeting.”

Voters will get a chance to decide on 27 total articles at the annual Onset Fire District meeting. The meeting will be held May 18 at 7:30 p.m. in the Dudley L. Brown VFW Post 2846.