Danville Fire Department awaits new headquarters

From the street, Danville’s Fire Station No. 1 is a charming 83-year-old building on the equally charming cobblestone Bridge Street in the Tobacco Warehouse District. But therein lies the problem, according to Fire Chief David Eagle, who said the community’s needs have outgrown the station.

Surrounded by a Danville Utilities substation, the Dan River and private property, the station, which houses the department’s headquarters, has no room to grow, Eagle said.

It’s a tight squeeze all through the building. A few years ago, a column was removed so a larger door could be installed, but the engines and trucks still have to park carefully — there are lines painted on the ground to show where the wheels should be so all of the doors will have clearance to open.

If the HAZMAT truck is needed at a fire, the ladder truck has to be started up and driven onto the street to clear the way. Modern fire stations are built with entrances on both ends of the garage so all trucks can pull out without another truck having to be moved out of the way.

And it’s not just the apparatus that is tight for space — space is just as cramped for staff.

Space is tight everywhere

“Back when this station was built, we didn’t do EMS, we didn’t have a fire marshal’s office, we didn’t have a secretary — you basically had the chief and you had the guys,” Eagle said.

Now, with a secretary, EMS, two full-time fire marshals, a training division, three captains and three assistant chiefs, office space and desks are shared. The fire marshals share a space about 10 feet by 10 feet, and the six captains and assistant chiefs share three desks tucked into a separate room.

“There is no privacy when they want to counsel an employee, train an employee, coach an employee or mentor an employee,” Eagle said. “When we interview to hire new employees, we do it in our dining room. We don’t feel that lives up to our professional standards in running a first-class administration office.”

When you enter the front door, you run directly into the secretary’s desk — there is no lobby or waiting area. There is also no receiving area, so packages that arrive are pushed up against the wall anywhere they will fit until the contents can be unpacked and put away.

“It makes it difficult for us to get the very best prices we can get on things, because we don’t have adequate storage space,” Eagle said of his inability to take advantage of volume purchasing.

There are not separate bathroom facilities for men and women, and the sleeping quarters upstairs were not designed at a time when it was possible for women to become firefighters — so the three female firefighters in Danville are quartered at other, more modern, facilities.

Unlike many fire departments, this one does give each staff member their own bed — Eagle said firefighters at other stations often have to share beds, removing their bedding every time they go off shift so the next person can put their own on the bed.

Those 42 beds are jammed into three rooms upstairs. In the largest room, 32 beds are arranged head-to-head with little space between them. There are six beds in one small room and four in another.

Light sleepers would have trouble getting a good nights’ sleep, Eagle admitted.

One bathroom and a shower room are located on the second floor.

The basement, which firefighters dug out to create more space, has been fully utilized, Eagle said. There is room for storing the firefighters’ second set of gear, a small space crammed with exercise equipment and a workroom, where repairs to equipment are made.

The basement is also where some of the structural problems are more visible.

Old steam pipes are still in use and show multiple repairs, and one column is rapidly eroding and will need floor jacks to supplement it soon. With engines weighing up to 50,000 pounds — more than what a whole fleet of 1920s fire trucks would have weighed — plus all of the modern-day gear firefighters carry, it’s easy to see why the building is feeling the effects.

Firefighters keep it running

Most of the repairs to the station are handled by the firefighters, Eagle said.

They paint, build offices, build storage shelves for gear, have added a deck so they have somewhere outside to relax during their 24-hour shifts — anything to use every inch of space to its fullest potential.

“Our firefighters have done a tremendous job in maintaining what we have and using their creativity to make offices where they can, to paint, and to keep our maintenance costs as low as we possibly can,” Eagle said.

The age of the building also contributes to high maintenance costs. Eagle said the utility bill is about three times higher than at other stations, and runs between $1,400 and $2,000 a month.

“Jokingly, we say we’ve got to do something or we’ll fall in the river,” Eagle said. “But we are doing our due diligence to make the best of what we’ve got.”

Still a top-notch department

Despite space and age issues at the headquarters, the Danville Fire Department has a No. 2 PPC (public protection classification) rating with the Insurance Services Office — one of only five departments in the state to have the rating. There are no stations with a No. 1 ranking, the highest rating.

“ISO looks at our water system, our dispatch center and our fire department’s ability to deliver fire suppression services to our community,” Eagle said.

Another thing the ISO considers when rating a fire department is the distance of the station from the area it services — preferably with the service area within one and a half miles of the station.

Eagle said Danville’s fire stations are strategically located to provide fast service, but there is some overlap between the stations as well as areas that fall outside the ISO’s preferred one-and-a-half-mile area.

“The ISO consultant also wanted us to add an eighth station,” Eagle said, but noted that wasn’t financially feasible.

What council had to say

During a Danville City Council budget meeting May 5, Eagle told council members the station no longer meets the size and weight requirements for all of the apparatus a modern-day fire station needs. He added the station doesn’t meet the needs of the administration housed within it, and the building has structural and safety concerns.

In City Manager Lyle Lacy’s five-year Capital Improvements Plan for the city, now being reviewed by council, $4.5 million is budgeted in 2012 to purchase land and build a new 18,000-square-foot fire department headquarters.

Also in the budget was $125,000 for a needs assessment to take place in 2010, but Councilman Adam Tomer questioned whether that expense was necessary, since it has been known for a long time that the station is too small and has structural problems.

The new building will have to be built in the downtown area so the station can cover the same area it currently serves, Eagle said.

Mayor Sherman Saunders and the rest of the council members agreed the money would be better spent making whatever repairs will be necessary to keep the current fire station going until a new facility can be built.

Historical significance vs. efficiency

Eagle said there comes a time in any building’s history when it has outlived its usefulness.

“We love the tradition, the historic significance of this building, the tradition that has come out of this building,” Eagle said. “It makes me proud to be in this building and to manage a 125-year-old organization that I feel is the pride of Danville. But it’s become hard to continue that professionalism in what we have now”

Contact Thibodeau at dthibodeau@registerbee.com or (434) 791-7985.