MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake Fire Department was recently awarded a $30,000 grant from the Paul Lauzier Charitable Foundation, which will be used for repairs and improvements to their fire training facility.

The current fire training facility at Fire Station No. 1, 701 E. Third Ave., was built in 1997 and has played host to numerous training cycles. The training has taken its toll on the facility over the years and recently resulted in the burn room, which is used for training purposes, being placed permanently out of service. The decision was made to tear down the burn room in April.

In addition, more issues were found in the facility’s car fire and search and rescue props, both of which are used for training, and the sprinkler system in the training tower, according to city documents. The $30,000 will go toward resolving the issues at the training facility, as well as upgrading the multi-media equipment in the station’s training room, which allows the department to do a lot of their state required training at the station.

“The Fire Department would like to thank the Lauzier Charitable Foundation for this generous grant that will provide much-needed updates to the fire training facility, allowing the Moses Lake Fire Department to train for incident response that will better serve the citizens of our community,” Acting Fire Chief Brett Bastian said.

The city council voted on and unanimously accepted the grant during the last city meeting.

Richard Byrd can be reached via email at city@columbiabasinherald.com.