KANNAPOLIS — The community is invited to an open house to tour the renovated Kannapolis Fire Station 4 this Saturday, Oct. 12.

Chief Tracy Winecoff said the annual open house tradition began in 2009 at the main station. Over the years, the event grew into a larger health and safety fair that included an apparatus parade, until COVID entered the picture.

“We took a hiatus for a few years, then resumed with a combined “stuff the truck” event to coincide with the safety fair and parade,” he said, “but then scaled back to bring the focus more toward fire prevention.”

This year’s open house will take place from 10 a.m. – noon this Saturday at Fire Station 4, 328 Stewart St. NW, Concord.

“With the replacement of stations 2 and 3 in 2019 and the recent remodels of of stations 1 and 4m we felt like the ‘community’ based open houses would be a nice change to allow our neighbors to visit their local firehouse, and meet their firefighters that would be the first to respond if ever needed,” Winecoff said.

Fire Station 4 was originally built over 65 years ago and needed many updates in order to accommodate the current diverse firefighting workforce. The renovations included important improvements to the fire apparatus bays, living quarters, office space, kitchen and gym equipment space.

The plan overall moving forward is to hold an open house at each station annually. The department also plans to continue the festival and truck parade, scheduled each year to coincide with fire prevention week in October. This year’s event was cancelled because the department members were deployed to Western North Carolina, but Winecoff said they will resume next year.

During Saturday’s open house, the public is invited to tour the newly renovated station, meet firefighters, and see the fire apparatus. Firefighters will also be giving out safety information and tips.