Columbia County Fire Rescue has a lot to celebrate on Tuesday as a ribbon cutting was held for the remodeled Fire Station 2 on Gibbs Road and a new rescue truck has officially gone into service.
For Fire Chief Jeremy Wallen, it was exciting to see the remodeled station because the old facility was one of the places he worked when he first started out. But the fire department had outgrown the previous facility, so it was time for an upgrade. The renovation project was approved in the 2017-2022 SPLOST.
The new facility is 13,000 square feet, is two stories, has three bays for vehicles and has multiple rooms, including a uniform storage, training classroom, bunk rooms, workout area and more, said Steven Prather, director of facility services with Columbia County.
“We have adequate space,” Wallen said of the new facility. “We’re addressing some of our safety concerns, such as there’s some technology that protects us from cancer causing agents. We separate the fire side from the living side. There’s a peaceful rest here for the little bit of downtime they may find so they are better able to go (out on calls.)”
The new facility also features technology upgrades, which is important when it comes to access to information, Wallen said.
“As you look around, you’ll notice boards, monitors that are displaying all your active calls,” Wallen said. “They also have mapping, and these are throughout the facility. Our alerting system here is top notch. There’s a lot of time reduction in not having to do repetitive alerting. So, we can put everybody in the street across our different fire stations at the same time versus one after the other. We’ve been doing that for a couple of years but getting that into this facility is an improvement.”
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The facility also stores the necessary equipment, including advance medical equipment and protective uniforms, Wallen said. It also has a separate decontamination area so the firefighters can go straight there after getting back from a scene and get cleaned up without going to the living area.
The new facility can hold 18 people while the old one could hold four, Wallen said. It can also house six to seven apparatuses depending on the type of vehicle.
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“We’re ready for the next 30 plus years in the design,” Wallen said. “We stay here in the heart because we’re where we need to be, this is where we need to be.”
Designing the new fire station
Besides being large enough for more employees and adding more storage, Wallen had some specific ideas of how he wanted the station to look. Those ideas featured stone and arches, which were inspired by the original Philadelphia fire stations designs. He spoke to Prather about it and Prather, anticipating what Wallen wanted, pulled out similar designs. But that wasn’t all he wanted.
“We want to fit into the community that we’re in,” Wallen said. “Here we’re boundaried on three sides by the Evans school district. They actually follow with their mascot; it’s the Knights from elementary to high school and a lot of schools don’t do that. Because of that our color scheme, our gold medallion out front, it’s a gold medallion with a black background to match Evans Knight’s colors.”
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“Push-in ceremony” for new rescue truck
Not only did Columbia County hold a ribbon cutting for the fire station, but a new rescue truck was officially put into service after a traditional “push-in ceremony.” Wallen said the new rescue truck was needed to hold the equipment used for different rescues.
“As we’ve moved into swift water rescue, technical rescue, high end rescue on top of the typical rescue associated with the jaws of life and stuff, all of that is here,” Wallen said. “…this was one of my bucket lists before I retire, I want what’s considered a heavy rescue. This is as close as I can get to that to meet our needs here. So, I’m really excited about it. The push-in is just one of the traditions of a way to put a new truck in service.”
Columbia County Fire Station 2 is located at 518 Gibbs Road in Evans.
