Emergency at the Fire Station

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Emergency at the Fire Station

Condition of West side building has gone downhill for years

Emporia Gazette - Emporia,KS*

By Berlin

Monday, December 24, 2007

http://www.emporiagazette.com/news/2007/dec/24/emergency_fire_station

/

A guided trip through Fire Station No. 2 makes the city's

preliminary effort to replace the west side fire facility seem

like ... well, an emergency.

Ventilation and humidity problems are evident, with mold thriving in

various locations. That problem was noticed after firefighters began

coming down with staph infections. Leaks in the roof are prevalent

and are patched three to five times a year. When it rains or snows,

fire workers have to place pans inside the ceiling tiles to catch

the water. One leak hovers right over an electronics panel,

sometimes dripping water right next to it.

When ladder trucks are washed in the garage, uneven settling of

concrete causes water to slide outward toward the walls, instead of

to the center of the garage. As a result, shelves and equipment at

the sides and corners get soaked. Fire Capt. Rick Peck calls the

rusty, run-down training tower on the western side of the

property " essentially useless. "

All these issues and more exist for a fire station that hasn't yet

extinguished the candles on its 29th birthday cake.

This year, the city asked Fire Chief Jack to analyze

potential new locations for station 2. selected two city-

owned sites and presented an analysis of each at the city commission

work session on Dec. 12. However, the current location of station 2

provides the department with better response times than either of

those proposed sites. said if he had to choose between either

of the two new sites or rebuilding station 2 on its existing site,

he would select the latter.

So far, potential location is all that has been discussed; there

hasn't been any talk yet of a timetable for replacing the facility,

or how much it would cost.

" I feel good about the process we have in place, " said.

Longtime problems

said the station building was already showing signs of

deterioration when he took the job in 2001, and the effort to do

something about it has been an ongoing process since then.

At least one retired firefighter had problems with station 2 ever

since it opened in April 1979.

" The station sucked from day one, " said Bill Renfro, a retired

firefighter who logged more than 27 years with the department. " I

hated it out there ... When I became a battalion chief, I was

really, really happy that I didn't have to go out there anymore. "

Renfro said the department had problems with the building sometime

before 1992 or 1993, when he became a lieutenant.

" The furnace, you either freeze to death for a month or sweat for a

month, " he said, " because they have to pay somebody to come out and

change it over twice a year. "

He recalled one incident where a problem with the furnace caused the

station to fill with carbon monoxide. Two firefighters went to the

hospital, and the rest were moved temporarily to Fire Station No. 1.

Renfro said the new station would need exhaust tubes that hook onto

the exhaust station of each fire vehicle so CO could be expelled

from the building before the vehicles drive off, and when the trucks

are shut down upon return. He said CO tests showed that firefighters

were picking up carbon monoxide and taking it with them into other

parts of the station.

" When they would just back a vehicle in coming off a run, wait until

the air built back up, shut it off, there was more CO out there than

what we were allowed to go into a building without an air pack on, "

he said.

Peck, a 20-year veteran of the fire department, said station 2 was a

good facility when he began serving, when the building was about

eight years old.

Peck said that only half the station's air system works because of a

broken compressor. He estimates that the ventilation and mold have

been an issue at the station for about five years. " We first noticed

it when we were losing all these people to staph infections, " Peck

said. " We changed a lot of our habits, the cleaning, and lay on

plastic beds now ... We don't have any towels whatsoever; we use

paper towels for everything. So we're staying ahead of it because

we're so disposable in our day-to-day living. "

Huge cracks in the hollow concrete of the driveway allow water to

shoot up every time the wheels of a ladder truck run across the

cracks. Space is an issue not just with the firefighters and their

living and sleeping areas, but also with the garage, which isn't big

enough to accommodate the increasing sizes of modern ladder trucks.

" When you take pride in the department, and you're trying to take

care of a building like this that's become so dilapidated, it kind

of seems a little fruitless at times to keep striving to keep it

clean, " said Reson Bradford, a firefighter with 11 years at the

department.

" I think we're more concerned out here with our health than

anything, (with) the problems I've described to you with our air-

handling system, " Peck added. " It's much more of a chore to keep

everything nice with the building itself. "

Designer, builder

There's no national standard for how long a fire station should stay

in service, and there don't appear to have been any definite

promises or forecasts made for how long the station would last.

Markowitz Builders earned the contract to construct the building for

the city in September 1977 for a total cost of a little more than

$581,000. Bill Whetzel, president of Markowitz Builders, didn't

return calls for this story.

" Markowitz Builders, I don't have a problem with them so much, "

Renfro said. " They have to go by whatever the architect figured out. "

Trevor , the retired architect who designed the building, said

it was the first building he ever designed that was made entirely of

reinforced concrete. He said that presented some unique challenges,

as did the fact that he had no example to work off when designing

the training tower.

" It was a small structure, " he said of the tower, " but it took a lot

of design and time to do. "

didn't design station 2 with any life span in mind for the

facility. He said he was satisfied with the design at the time, but

things change over time that he could not anticipate. He and his

colleagues felt the concrete would be sufficient to keep the

building up for awhile.

" We had structural engineers ... that said it would be there as long

as they needed, " he said.

There are plenty of examples of fire stations lasting more than 28

years. Emporia's fire headquarters is one; Fire Station No. 1 in the

Civic Auditorium Building, with renovations, has stood since 1941.

The city of Wichita currently has 18 fire stations and is preparing

to build three more. Six of its current stations have been rebuilt

since 2003. Of the other 12, eight opened prior to 1979, including

one station that dates from 1954 and five others that were built in

the '60s.

Solutions

The two potential sites selected and analyzed for the city

commission earlier this month were a site west of Dryer Park and one

at the Public Works building. Both new sites, told the

commssion, could potentially have a negative effect on the fire

department's insurance rating. The fire department currently has a

Class 4 rating from the Insurance Services Office on the ISO's scale

of one to 10, one being the best.

City Manager Matt Zimmerman had look at other potential sites

because of the potential retail uses for station 2's existing site.

" Do some other locations make just as much sense (for a new

station)? Maybe they don't, " Zimmerman said. " But it makes sense to

take a look at it, and I think what we've found is that our response

times will be slightly negatively impacted, and I think that's

something we have to take into account.

" But I think we've also eliminated a lot of other sites that would

significantly, or even severely, negatively impact our response

time, particularly onto the interstate. "

Zimmerman said, for example, that the city looked at the possibility

of placing a new station in the vicinity of the Aquatic

Center. But a location so far out west would add at least a minute

to response times.

" Plus, we know the 18th Avenue bridge is gonna be torn out in a year

or two, " he said. " So how's that going to start impacting things if

we wanted to take a look at building a facility out there? "

himself hasn't analyzed any other potential sites, saying he

hasn't received further direction to do so.

" You have to remember this is a long-term process, " Zimmerman

said. " We have to figure out not only what do we want to do with

this building, but where do we want to do it with this building. "