News

Charlottesville, Va. Seeks Top Ranking With $14M Firehouse

Aaron Richardson

12/15/2013

The new three-story Charlottesville firehouse is striking, state-of-the-art and packed with amenities.

When the station begins taking calls early next year, firefighters will be roused by flashing lights and progressively louder tones, rather than traditional alarms, reducing the risk of heart attacks. The computerized system can dispatch fire and emergency crews and get units rolling before a 911 call even ends. Four-fold garage doors open twice as quickly as traditional rolling doors. A high-tech heating system conserves energy and is expected to fetch the Fontaine Avenue station a gold or platinum environmental rating.

In the glass-walled entryway hangs a contorted, rusty length of donated structural steel from the World Trade Center. The 17-foot, 4,000-pound I-beam is hung so that it appears to be falling from the sky. On one side of the building stands a training tower. On the opposite side, a terrace is set off the fire chief's office. A row of dorm rooms is bookended by two sliding poles -- dubbed the North and South poles.

Officials hope the new station will lead to the city's fire protection being the top-rated in the state and among the highest-rated in America.

That would come at a cost: Station 10 is expected to cost city taxpayers $14.2 million, officials said.

Media tours of the firehouse are scheduled for this week.

Among its big-ticket costs:

--$355,000: A five-well geothermal heating system, which pulls groundwater through a heat exchanger to offset energy costs and consumption by automatically keeping the station at around 50 degrees. A constant temperature means a lighter load on the station's heating and air conditioning system, leading to lower energy costs, officials said.

--$143,000: The total cost of the station's 84 wood and 42 hollow metal access doors and Ingersoll-Rand security system.

--$164,959: The alarm, a WestNet Smart Station Alerting System. The same system is used in three Albemarle County firehouses, and can dispatch fire units before a 911 caller has hung up.

--$131,300: Eight four-fold metal garage bay doors. Officials said the doors are more reliable and faster than traditional overhead garage doors. Rather than rolling vertically, the doors fold horizontally, similar to a closet door.

--$57,800: Four double-sided lockers for each of 18 dorm rooms. The lockers allow access from both the hallway and each dorm, allowing firefighters starting a shift to retrieve belongings without disturbing sleeping firefighters from the previous shift.

--$50,900: Residential appliances, including three Sub-Zero Model BI 42-S side-by-side, 42-inch-wide refrigerators, which retail at nearly $8,000 each, and one Wolf R606DG six-burner, two-oven gas range, retailing at $12,500. Other features include two Viking industrial microwaves, two under-counter ice makers, two Bosch dishwashers, a washing machine and a gas clothes dryer. City officials said they could not provide an itemization of the individual costs for those items.

Researched for years, the station's design, features and location are expected to help Charlottesville obtain a Class 1 rating, the highest possible, from the Insurance Services Office, or ISO, a New Jersey-based company that gathers fire proprietary protection information for the insurance industry for use in determining premiums.

Charlottesville currently is rated Class 2 on a scale that slides from 1 to a low of 10 and accounts for a wide range of factors, including emergency communications, response times, water supply and training. Among 47,000 fire districts rated by ISO, just 60 -- none in Virginia -- have achieved Class 1 status, according to ISO's website.

Station 10 is two miles closer to the majority of its calls than its predecessor, city fire Chief Charles Werner said. That will play a huge role in cutting response times, he said. The chief estimated that more than a fifth of the department's 5,200 annual calls will see faster responses after firefighters start responding from the new station Jan. 6. Call response in the area served by the station is expected to be slashed by at least half to two to four minutes.

Location is part of that equation. So, too, are the new alarm system, four-fold doors and even the North and South sliding poles. Using stairs could add 30 seconds or more to the station's response times, Werner said.

But there's more to the new firehouse than improved response times.

The project included of $731,000 in change orders issued as the work progressed. The city added $23,000 worth of rope anchors for in-house training exercises, $26,000 to modify a basement training vault containing simulated culverts and $1,589 to move ceiling fans in the dorms so they did not hit locker doors. Two terraces, including the one off Werner's office, also were added, although their costs were unclear. Officials said the station is still at or under budget.

Werner said his terrace serves a critical purpose.

"If I want to get technical about it, this is my weather observation post, and that's my official story and I am sticking to it," he joked, standing on the terrace last week.

The terraces were added, Werner said, when an architect pointed out that installing paving stones to what otherwise would have been roof space would not be too costly.

Some features are aimed at efficiency along with convenience.

The industrial refrigerators and stove are expensive but need less maintenance than traditional residential units, said David Hartman, fire department project lead.

"You can put in a more affordable refrigerator, but based on the amount of use ... you will burn up the compressors every two to three years, and these have separate compressors," he said. "There are some of these units that [have been] in service since the 1960s."

Training days

Additions such as rope anchors contribute to one of the station's critical functions -- training.

Each of 105 rope anchor points scattered inside and on the exterior of the 30,000-square-foot building is rated to carry 5,000 pounds. The anchors will allow firefighters to perform rope and ladder rescue exercises in the main garage bay and an adjacent four-story training tower and from two rappelling balconies at the rear of the building.

"Day to day you could have two or three training operations going on at one time in addition to the daily operations," Werner said.

The training tower also features theatrical smoke machines powerful enough to make it impossible to see inside the structure, Hartman said.

"We can actually have [firefighters] simulate responding into an apartment building and going up the stairwell with their high-rise packs," Hartman said.

In addition, trainers can flow 400 gallons of water per minute through the tower without flooding it.

In the basement parking garage, two manhole covers provide access to a network of 20-foot sections of pipe, simulating different widths of sewer and drainage lines.

Combined with manholes and grates on the upper floors, the simulated culverts allow firefighters to train for underground rescues. Some of that training previously took place at the University of Virginia.

"But we could never find parking because we take up so much space," Werner said.

All training except live exercises can take place at Station 10. Much of that work now takes place at a facility adjacent to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.

That "requires us to go out of the city and take units out of service to train," Werner said.

Training at Station 10 means "we're here when the call comes," the chief said, "and it increases our reliability as a fire department."

Safety and symbols

Protecting firefighters also was a key facet of the design.

To control the spread of infections and hazardous chemicals picked up at fires and emergency scenes, the station includes an industrial extractor, which uses gentle soap, water and a spin cycle producing several times the force of gravity to remove dangerous particles from protective gear.

Uniforms and gear will be hung to dry in a room with its own closed ventilation system to control the spread of noxious gases.

"In the past ... firefighters had a 10-year shorter life expectancy than the general population," Werner said. "That was because of stress and exposure to chemicals."

To prevent spreading infection into offices and living quarters, firefighters will not be allowed to wear protective gear outside of the main garage bay.

"What they are finding across the country is that our personnel are bringing a lot of these contaminants and products back to the station," Hartman said. "What then happens is they pass it off, they get sick and their family gets sick."

Furniture throughout the station is made of non-porous wood or faux leather to make it easier to clean.

Safeguarding the environment is part of the building's design, too.

All new city buildings must conform to the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certification, said Mike Mollica, city project manager.

He estimated that the Fontaine firehouse would obtain either a LEED Gold or LEED Platinum certification, the highest two tiers possible.

The geothermal heating system is a big part of that, Werner said. In addition, all lights are on automatic switches that turn off when a room is unoccupied.

Skylights and windows take advantage of natural light, and electric lights will automatically turn off when natural light is bright enough.

Engineering the geothermal system is expensive up front, Mollica said, but the investment pays for itself over time.

"If you cost out your heating and your cooling loads over time, you are looking at an eight- to 10- to 12-year payback," he said. "They have a life of about 50 years, so they pay their own way."

One of the building's most eye-catching features -- the World Trade Center that steel greets visitors entering the building -- came at no cost.

Fading spray paint in four spots reads "FDNY," a memorial to the 343 New York firefighters and paramedics killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"The significance of 'FDNY' is that it was a visual marker at Ground Zero that a body of a firefighter was in proximity to the steel," Werner said. "There are actually four of those on it, which means that there were four firefighters who were in proximity to this particular steel."

The steel was donated to Charlottesville by the New York Fire Department, Werner said. Charlottesville fire officials chose the beam after visiting a Kennedy Airport hangar and consulting with architects, who suggested erecting the steel so it appeared to be falling on 9/11, Werner said.

"We were originally going to have it coming up out of the floor," the chief said, "but our architect said, 'Why don't you create something more dramatic?'"