During the 1960s and 70s, Santa Clara invested in fire department infrastructure to support explosive growth that would more than double the city’s population. The city even had the foresight to build a fire station on the Northside, which, at the time, had little development.
Today, those fire stations are showing their age, and some have reached the end of their useful lives. Social changes have created requirements that didn’t exist 50 years ago. The only new fire station in the city is Station #10 — rebuilt by Related Companies to serve its future Northside development.
Add to that a financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic delivering body blows to Santa Clara’s budget, and Santa Clara hasn’t been able to replace or significantly renovate any fire stations since 2008. The only new fire station in the city is Station #10, which was rebuilt by Related Companies to serve its future Northside development.
Santa Clara is hardly alone. Forty-three percent of U.S. fire stations are more than 40 years old, according to a 2019 study by the National Fire Protection Association, and 59% lack adequate space and systems and to minimize exposure to toxic substances and fumes.
The city’s fire stations have been treading water since 2008 and the costs of construction continue to rise. If the bond measure on November’s ballot fails to pass, Santa Clara will likely face hard decisions — perhaps even closing a fire station.
Aging Fire Stations Need Replacement
A top need for Santa Clara is rebuilding Fire Stations #5 and #7.
Built in 1961, Fire Station #5 is the oldest fire station in the city. Its leaking roof needed complete replacement a decade ago, and there’s a limit to how much patchwork repair can keep the roof functional.
“I don’t know how long the building will continue to be usable without some kind of major intervention,” said Deputy Fire Chief Jeremy Ray.
But the roof is only the start of the problems at Fire Station #5. It’s also too small for modern fire apparatus; for example, it can’t accommodate aerial ladder trucks.
“Over the ensuing 60 years, fire apparatus has gotten larger because they’ve been required to do a lot more things,” said Ray. “We respond on medical calls, traffic accidents, rescues, all kinds of things. Fire trucks are basically a big toolbox, and when you have a lot more tools, you need a bigger toolbox. We can’t fit an aerial ladder truck at that station.”
Rebuilding Fire Station #5 has been on the drawing board for a decade. Its central location on Bowers Avenue makes it the best place for larger ladder trucks.
“Having that truck at the central locations lets them cover a much larger area of the city,” said Ray, “The response time is ideal for that truck to be able to respond anywhere in the southern half of the city.”
Built in 1974, Fire Station #7 is another aging building. But there, structural deterioration is the central reason for rebuilding. The structure has significant termite damage; its wood single siding attracts termites as well as being fire prone and increasingly costly to insure.
Firefighter Needs Have Changed in Half a Century
Firefighting has changed, too, since Santa Clara’s fire stations were built. Female firefighters, new working schedules and new safety standards all mean rebuilding or significantly renovating half-century-old fire stations.
Fire Station #7, for example, Ray said, “has one big sleeping room because that’s the way it used to be before we had women in the fire service.”
Right now, there are makeshift sleeping cubicles, which aren’t acceptable when firefighter shifts today are 48 hours — longer if they have to work overtime.
While workout rooms are luxuries for many, they are necessities for people whose physical fitness and strength are critical to public safety.
“Station seven doesn’t have any kind of a fitness room,” said Ray. “All of their fitness equipment is out on the apparatus bay floor [where the fire trucks and engines are stored].”
Having workout equipment in the apparatus bay increases exposure to diesel fumes, increasing the likelihood of heart and respiratory disease and cancer.
Diesel fumes aren’t the only toxic substances that firefighters face.
“Every fire has a significant number of carcinogens in the smoke and that gets into our protective gear,” said Ray. “All modern fire stations have a room that is specifically built for turnout [protective gear] storage, with a separate ventilation system and a powerful enough exhaust fan to turn over the air on a regular basis.”
In Santa Clara’s aging Stations #7 and #5 — as well as Stations #1 and #9 — turnout gear is kept in lockers near the apparatus floor. Despite special exhaust fans, the lockers aren’t isolated from the ventilation in the rest of the fire station.
This isn’t a complete list of Santa Clara Fire Department needs. Some stations don’t meet modern seismic standards and many buildings and offices aren’t ADA accessible.
And the department’s fire training tower, built in 1990, has, simply through the wear and tear of repeated fire and water exposure, “degraded to the point that it’s not 100% usable for its intended purpose anymore.” Three years ago, the fire department evaluated whether the building needed replacement or renovation. The good news was the tower could be renovated, but at a cost of $900,000. With inflation, that’s over $1 million.
So far, the Santa Clara Fire Department has kept these buildings functioning and maintained the department’s high level of service. But everything has an expiration date, and at some point, Fire Station #7 or #5 will no longer be usable.
“I can’t tell you whether that would happen in 10 years or 30 years, but it will happen eventually,” said Ray. “There comes a point where you have to make decisions about how to deploy your resources. If a fire station has to close, that means response times into that part of the city are going to be slower because the response is going to be coming from someplace else.”
