Station designed to keep firefighters safe
The wait for a new fire station on the Far East Side is almost over, with the Columbus City Council recently approving construction after additional safety features were added to the building plans. The decision to add those features, which are intended to limit firefighters’ exposure to chemicals that could cause cancer, came in early January and led to the delay of a project 10 years in the making. Construction on the $10.5 million station at 711 N. Waggoner Road is set to begin in September and conclude in November 2019. The station is expected to open in spring or early summer of 2020, according to council documents.
Plans for Fire Station No. 35 were first hatched a decade ago as calls to the Far East Side area increased. But the Great Recession derailed the project.
"It is big for the department and the community," said Assistant Fire Chief Richard Ballard, who heads the Columbus Division of Fire's Support Services Bureau, which oversees the division's construction and facility maintenance.
The inclusion of the safety features comes amid a broader statewide effort to protect firefighters from the chemicals and carcinogens they encounter on the job. In June, for example, the Bureau of Workers' Compensation awarded 75 Ohio fire departments grants to buy new safety equipment. A Dispatch series published this past October brought attention to significant rates of work-related cancer among firefighters, who are 14 percent more likely to get cancer than the general public. They're twice as likely to develop skin and testicular cancer, as well as mesothelioma, which is caused by exposure to asbestos, The Dispatch reported.
Two main changes were made during the redesign of the fire station, which added 3,000 square feet to the building. The first is a set of hoses that will extend from the ceiling and connect with the exhaust pipes of vehicles. When the trucks start, the hoses will act as vacuums, directly capturing exhaust fumes before they can be released into the bay and inhaled by firefighters.
Stations currently have fans that help bring clean air into bays, but "those aren't nearly as effective as the direct capture," Ballard said.
Fire Station No. 35 will be the city's only one with the direct-capture technology, though a station planned for the Linden area also will have them.
The second safety feature added to the redesign will be the decontamination stations, a series of rooms designed to keep harmful post-fire chemicals separate from firefighters' living quarters.
After a fire, firefighters will take off and bag their sootcovered gear in one room and then enter a second room that has clean clothes. They'll shower and dress in a third area before they enter the living quarters.
Though it varies by station, firefighters currently might walk through the station in dirty gear as they make their way to a shower. The chemicals from their clothes can be released into the air or onto furniture if a firefighter sits down, Ballard said.
"(The new system) is better because they will be required to decontaminate before they enter the station," Ballard said. "There is nothing transferred in."
David Montgomery, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 67, said the station will incorporate new knowledge about the "science of the post-fire environment."
"Firefighting is inherently dangerous, just by rule, and we try to mitigate the dangers," he said. "The acute dangers are when the building is on fire, but what we're finding now is, really, you're just as at risk after the fire, when you're doing overhaul and cleaning up, and so that part we can fix."
Montgomery acknowledged that there are many challenges ahead in improving firefighters' safety and developing best practices, but he said it's important to continue addressing areas where known risks are present.
"Moving forward with this different technology in the building itself is huge," he said. "That's huge stuff, that they're putting us in a position where they're going to invest in us not becoming ill, and that's a big deal."