Austin Fire plans to build 5 roomier firehouses for faster response

Feb. 08--Austin Fire Station 4, a century-old building nestled into a neighborhood off 12th Street and Lamar Boulevard, has far more character and history in its walls than modern amenities.

In the firehouse's early days, crews bolted into action with a horse-drawn pump. The footprint of the old posts where the horses were kept can still be seen in the floor, along with scarred stone on the ground that helped the animals gain traction.

Upstairs, the oldest of the Austin Fire Department's 49 stations has been gutted, primarily for storage by the department. Ceiling tiles have fallen away, and old wood groans with age as you walk.

Austin has built new fire stations sporadically over the past century, but its historic stations -- including downtown's Station 1, the busiest in the city -- sit tucked within a growing grid of skyscrapers and homes. Each poses a challenge to a department wrestling with how to build more modern facilities to serve a booming population riding a surge of growth.

Over the next six years, five new Austin fire stations are scheduled to be built in areas of critical need. But with a potential 25 percent population increase anticipated by 2033, according to city data, fire officials are already struggling to predict what the city's needs will be in 20 years, where they will find room for new stations, and, as property values continue to soar, how they will pay for them.

New construction

Austin's population grew by more than 40 percent from 2003 to 2018, according to data from the city's demographer. The surge put stress on critical city infrastructure, including roadways, housing and, increasingly, first responders.

Austin firefighters have been tested by worsening response times in some areas, as well as by old fire stations with limited capabilities.

The five stations to be built over the next six years will serve the Travis Country neighborhood near the Barton Creek greenbelt, Loop 360 and Davenport in West Austin, Goodnight Ranch in Southeast Austin, Canyon Creek near RM 620, and Del Valle. While basic plans for the facilities are in the works, firm locations and design elements have not been set for all of them.

"One thing people always ask is: 'Where's it gonna go? Where will the station be located,'" Fire Department spokeswoman Michelle Tanzola said. "Many times we don't know."

She said the available land and the specific parameters for a fire station are unique and tricky.

"Land out there in the Loop 360, Davenport area, which is where (one of) the stations will serve, is very scarce and very expensive," she said.

The Fire Department has a goal of eight-minute response times for 90 percent of the calls it receives. Each of those areas have sectors where firefighters achieve that goal less than 50 percent of the time. That creates serious danger for anyone with an emergency in those areas, and painful increases in insurance premiums for many, according to the city ordinance approving the new facilities.

"We're looking out, and right now we know we need these five, but I guarantee there's more that we'll need in the future," Austin Fire Assistant Chief Aaron Woolverton said. "It's inevitable."

Lack of viable land for the stations and significant land prices have caused consternation for the department. At a public hearing last month, officials asked residents near Loop 360 to help them identify any landowners who might be willing to cede or sell land to the city for a station.

Wes Hopkins, a battalion chief for Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services, said his agency is experiencing some of the same issues. The five new stations planned over the next six years will be shared by Austin fire crews and medics.

"There are some stations that just have a fire truck, some stations that just have an ambulance, and some that we co-locate," Hopkins said.

For EMS, though, response time goals are often even more stringent than for fire calls.

"You want the ambulance there within four minutes because you start losing brain function," Hopkins said. "It takes a lot of ambulances to manage a 911 system," he said. "Having an ambulance north of here, south of here and then right smack-dab in the middle is really crucial to us."

Assistant Chief Larry Jantzen said the department is trying to project about 20 years into the future to anticipate what what it will need to meet service delivery needs across Austin.

"The growth moving out of the city expanded really rapidly over a period of about 15 years, and infrastructure was almost unable to keep up. So we have a lot of gaps on the periphery. We're starting to fill those in," he said.

Other gaps are emerging in the downtown area, which is served by the aging Station 1. The layout of Station 1 and the expensive property it sits on won't allow for additional construction, so the department might have no choice but to move the station to a larger downtown space.

"Before, a station with two engines and an aerial (ladder truck) could serve that amount of people downtown," Jantzen said. "But now that we have more and more people and they're stacking on top of each other, we're looking at how do we handle that service delivery need, and we can't do it at one, single location anymore."

Until then, officials plan to renovate the building again to keep it running the way it needs to.

High prices and scarce land have forced fire officials to rethink how they build stations too. Right now, Stations 1, 2 and 4 are the only two-story firehouses in operation. In the past, the department could afford to place a station on a larger footprint. But now, it's likely that many, if not all of the new facilities will be two-story structures.

Last of the old guard

While officials are busy trying to land on locations and designs for fire stations, they also are looking at amenities for the firefighters who live in them.

Fire stations aren't like an office building. Stations need multiple refrigerators for different shifts, complete kitchens, workout rooms and separate bathrooms and changing facilities for men and women.

Firefighting was a male profession for much of its history. That fact is clear in Stations 1, 2 and 4, which have only small facilities for women who are staffed there. The department has worked over the past several years to retrofit most facilities with separate locker rooms for men and women, and are now close to completing work on the final few, which are among the oldest and most difficult to remodel.

In those oldest stations, the conditions are cozy, if not cramped, but firefighters love working and living there. One Station 4 crew member even commutes from Round Rock for every shift, though many other stations are closer.

The two-story firehouse at Station 2, on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near Guadalupe Street, has a similar feel, but it resembles a quaint Bavarian house, whose narrow halls make the quarters feel special for crews that work there.

Stations 1 and 2 are the only two firehouses that still have a fire pole to get crews quickly from their bunk room to the trucks. The poles, prominent in the nostalgic image of firefighting, have been phased out over the years. Officials say the newest stations, even though they will likely be two stories, probably won't have them.

What they will have is new technology that will help keep firefighters rested, prepared and safe from the toxic materials they encounter while doing their jobs. Jantzen said fire officials are working to keep all gear dirtied in fires outside of a station to keep soot and other harmful materials out of the station. Stations also are equipped with exhaust hoses that hook up to trucks to prevent engine fumes from billowing into living quarters.

Maintaining tradition

Some stations, unlike Stations 1, 2 and 4, which have communal sleeping areas, are outfitted with personal bunk rooms, like a small dorm, where firefighters can have privacy and only get alerted or awakened if they are being dispatched to a call. At many older stations, one alarm sounds out across the entire facility, waking everyone inside, regardless of whether they're on-call or not. It's something Rich Porst, a lieutenant at Station 2, has mixed feelings about.

"In a station like this, there's not a lot of space to go, which can be a really good thing," Porst said. "We like being with each other a lot, and most crews, you know, there's very much a family feel at any fire station. Just due to the nature of the history of the work and what we do, the togetherness is a big deal."

But the lack of space has serious consequences, even hindrances that department officials have to contend with. The truck room at Station 4 is so small that larger fire engines, such as those carrying ladders, can't fit. Fire officials say they want their new facilities to accommodate any vehicle in the fleet.

With future fire stations gaining more space and amenities, firefighters worry they'll lose a sense of heritage.

"The fire service in general has got a lot of tradition and history that we care about a lot, and this station is a big part of that," Porst said of Station 2. The bones of the older stations are a thread that ties those who work there now to the past.

"We love the the tradition of the house and what that comes with it," Station 2 firefighter Milo Green said. "The years of firefighters going up and down the stairs. Those original stairs have been there since 1932."

Where the Fire Department's newest stations will be, what they will look like and how they will cater to their communities and the men and women who staff them is still up for debate. What's certain is that many of the stations currently serving Austin will need changes to fit the city Austin becomes.

Alex Paranagua, one of the youngest firefighters at Station 4, said there's a middle ground between modern amenities and tradition.

"Stations are kind of a reflection of their neighborhood. So downtown, it's got that cramped feel. It's got lots of high-rises in a small amount of space. If you go to the outskirts, it's tons of ground, not a lot of houses," he said. "The station's can't be all uniform, right, you have to build for where you are. I think it would be kind of boring if we had 49 of the exact same station plastered across town."

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