Thursday morning, officials from the Weber Fire District and Powder Mountain Ski Resort broke ground on the Powder Mountain Fire Station.

Speaking during the groundbreaking ceremony, Powder Mountain Ski Resort Chief of Development Brooke Hontz said the project has been a long time coming.

“If you’ve been around Weber Fire and or Powder for years, there’s been talk — a lot of talk — about a fire station supporting not only Powder Mountain but this part of the mountainous region of Weber County,” she said.

Kevin Ward, chair of the Weber Fire District Board of Trustees, said this part of the county has been in need of additional fire protection for some time.

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

“As you know driving up here, this is pretty remote and the need for fire and emergency medical services up here is pretty critical,” he said. “Having this station up here, this will be a very valuable resource for this entire area as it continues to grow.”

He said it’s especially important in light of the fire year the region has seen.

“We’ve had a pretty monumental wildland fire season,” he said. “This gives us some added resources up here to be able to deal with fires up there or wildland fires, as well as potential structure fires and any other emergencies that we have up here. We’ll have just an absolute incredible trained staff up here that will be in this station and we look forward to serving this community.”

The new fire station will be around 7,000 square feet and host a ladder truck, a brush truck and an ambulance. The station will include two pull-through bays, office space for both the Weber Fire District and the Weber County Sheriff’s Office, and accommodations for 24-hour occupancy by firefighters including four bedrooms, a gym, a living room, a kitchen and two bathrooms.

Hontz told the Standard-Examiner that a fire station will fill a major safety gap in the area.

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

“As, unfortunately, we’ve seen throughout the United States in recent years, wildfire risks continue to grow,” she said. “The wildfire urban interface, which is a key term — particularly in Utah these days — has a relationship with the built environment. As we build out Powder Mountain more, even through recreation uses, there’s an elevated risk of having in an urban area or developed area fire to spread into wild lands. … This rounds out and adds to the capacity and the service of Weber Fire District in general. It also takes care of the very far north end of Weber County and into Cache County — the south end that doesn’t have any service currently from any district — so this was the absolute right place to put a new station.”

While the goal is to finish the new fire station by August 2027, Hontz noted that the shorter construction season at elevation could see the project take upwards of two years to complete.

However long the project takes to finish, she said the area is going to see a great benefit from the fire station’s presence.

“I’m so excited that this part of Utah and particularly of Weber Fire District is absolutely going to benefit from this service and commitment to the community being here,” she said. “For us to be able to have the station within the resort itself is just such an amazing ability for us to be able to also have enhanced service to our guests.”