VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. — The City of DeLand is growing and with that comes more calls to 911. It is something city leaders are working to get ahead of, with them approving nearly $90,000 to renovate and expand one of their first stations in a high growth area.

There’s never a boring day at work for Raymond Griffin.

“Every call is different. When we leave the station, it really could be anything,” said Griffin.

He’s been a firefighter EMT with DeLand for the last five years, spending two of them at DeLand Fire Station 83, located at 1655 East Taylor Rd.

“Being able to help the community, especially the community that I live in is a pretty great privilege,” he said.

He’s had to gear up quite a bit more, as the community around them has transformed since he started.

“It’s changed pretty drastically, when the station was first constructed there wasn’t a ton around here, a handful of houses and neighborhoods. But in recent years, especially construction has really stepped up, and there is a large number of houses surrounding the station now,” said Griffin.

With all the residential and commercial growth happening in the southeast part of the city, Fire Chief Todd Allen says they are expanding Fire Station 83 to keep up.

“In 2020, we really started to see the kick up of not only the developments in this area but also the call volume that has increased and over the past two years, we have seen a 25% increase in just the call volume in this area,” said Allen.

There are two other stations: DeLand Fire Station 81 and DeLand Fire Station 82.

City leaders approved $87,458 to go towards the architectural design of the expansion.

“This station was built in 2007, it needs just some regular updates to the interior, we are going to open up some walls, we have capacity at this station for three personnel, we want to have capacity for eight personnel, so we have to do a small addition to add different bunk rooms and get some more living capacity in the station so that is what the money is going to be used for,” said Allen.

They have also ordered a new truck, which, Griffin thinks it will give them even more of an edge.

“By having the new ladder truck and additional staffing, it would give us the ability to provide that much better of a service to the community so that is exciting to see coming down the future,” said Griffin.  

According to the DeLand Fire Department, Fire Station 83 responds to about 1,700 calls a year, which fire officials are currently able to keep up with, responding to each within six minutes. But data suggests with their current facility, they’d see their response rates rise as the population does, but they’re confident this expansion will keep that from happening.

“We just need to grow along with the community we provide the service to,” said Griffin.

Allowing them to get to every citizen that needs them.

Allen says right now they are working on design plans and hope to put it out to bid in September. By this time next year, he is hopeful the improvements will be finished or nearly complete.