Since March 2016, the Warwick Fire Department has been working out of two buildings. The training room, communications room and office are in the old building on Hastings Pond Road that the Firemen’s Association built in 1952. But the department’s six fire trucks are housed in a new building on Orange Road, which the Firemen’s Association built in 2016. The old building can only fit two trucks.

The plan had been for the new building to house all of the Fire Department’s operations. But the Firemen’s Association only had enough money to build the “apparatus bay” where the trucks are stored. The foundation for the rest of the new building was poured last fall, and there are plans to pour the concrete floor within the next month. After that, the association will be “pretty much broke,” Gates said.

The problem is, the new building was built by the Warwick Firemen’s Association, not by the Warwick Fire Department. Almost all members of the association are members of the Warwick Fire Department (except for a few former firefighters who no longer work for the department), but technically the two groups are different legal entities. The association is not officially associated with the town of Warwick while the department is part of town government. But the association owns the new building.