Fire Stations

A fire station (also known as a fire hall or fireman’s hall) is a structure or area for the storage of firefighting apparatus such as fire engines and related vehicles, personal protective equipment, fire hoses and other specialized equipment. The facility may also contain working and living space for the firefighting personnel and their support staff.

In the United States, most cities and towns have fire departments that operate stations, but there are many independent volunteer fire companies as well. Generally, the city fire department is in charge of building and maintaining the stations. In larger cities, the fire department may contract out some of the work to private construction firms.

Fire stations are usually staffed by full-time firefighters. The responsibilities of the fire department include responding to emergency calls, providing public education programs, conducting inspections and fire prevention activities and managing the fire suppression systems in the city. A large number of firefighters are employed, with some departments requiring over 100 on-duty personnel to cover the shifts.

Most fire stations have administrative areas for standard offices, conference and training rooms. Some may have highly specialized dispatch rooms that are specially designed to handle emergencies. In the New York City Fire Department, for example, dispatchers use a computerized system to process and communicate emergency calls.

The fire stations are also used for the storage of firefighting agents, such as water, foam, smoke and gas, which are required for the operation of fire fighting equipment. Typically, this will be a single-story structure separate from the main fire station building. This area is often located along the drive leading to the Apparatus Bay, making it easy to load and unload the agent containers from the fire trucks.

Living spaces are shared by multiple firefighters and may include a kitchen, dining room, living room and bathrooms. Some stations are experimenting with separate dorm rooms for each firefighter, which can be very helpful to maintain a high quality of life. These rooms are sometimes fitted with wall-beds, which offer the best of both worlds by combining the functionality of individual beds and the space savings of bunk beds.

In addition to the fire stations, most municipalities have an extensive fleet of fire trucks that are assigned to specific fire companies and are maintained at the stations. The fire trucks are often assigned a designated truck bay where the vehicle maintenance crew can prepare and store the trucks prior to dispatching them for an emergency call.

New York City, the largest urban fire department in the United States, has a network of over 60 fire stations and over 1,000 firefighting vehicles. The FDNY employs over 11,400 firefighters and 2800 emergency medical technicians and paramedics.