Since staff at Steamboat Springs Fire Rescue spend one-third of their lives at a fire station ready to rush out to help people in trouble, the department leadership worked to make sure the design of the new downtown Fire Station No. 1 would help keep personnel healthy.

The structure — which cost $20.6 million and measures more than 18,000 square feet — is scheduled to become operational at the end of January and includes many improvements for health, safety and well-being, as well as offering firefighters sleeping quarters and training facilities.

The updates and capabilities at the new station are strikingly apparent when compared to the current fire station on 840 Yampa St., which was built in 1974 and has served the city in various ways through the years.

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During an upbeat tour of the new station on Monday, Fire Chief Chuck Cerasoli expressed the department’s excitement about the site.

“It’s an incredible upgrade from our current setup,” he said. “Not only did we build it with the health and wellness of our employees in mind but also response times and location to better to serve the community. Those are the things that we are beyond ecstatic about.”

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Building breakdown

The two-story fire station built by FCI Constructors, which also built Sleeping Giant School, includes the following:

• Large apparatus and vehicle bay, operated in a drive-through capability
• Equipment repair workshop section
• Eight second-story sleeping quarters
• Downstairs workout facility

The station’s public entrance at 1015 Oak St. includes many new storage and office spaces, training facilities, updated communications technology, and a large kitchen and day room area outfitted to accommodate three shifts of personnel that cover 24/7.

Except for grocery shopping to fill the three new refrigerators and food pantries — one for each crew shift — the new station is intended to meet the needs of the crews so they can stay on site and be ready to respond.

Know your zones

Cerasoli — who has been with the department 24 years — noted the key design improvement is the layout that separates the building into red, yellow and green zones. Red is designated the hot work zone, while green is clean living quarters. The two are separated by the yellow zone.

Cerasoli and Lt. Tony DeRisio, now with the department 18 years, demonstrated how the red zone is sealed off from the other zones to keep contaminants out of the office, workout, living and dining quarters.

Keeping these areas separated is crucial for the health of fire personnel.

According to the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, firefighters have a 9% higher risk of being diagnosed with cancer and a 14% higher risk of dying from cancer than the general U.S. population.

The station’s red zone is where vehicles sit and where fire and ambulance crews take off outer gear that may be contaminated with items such as chemicals, toxins, vomit, blood, feces and road grime — anything crews may encounter during emergency situations.

The protective gear can now be cleaned on-site, and staff can step into a decontamination shower. Cleaned bunker or incident gear used by responders will be stored in open cubicles in a room with special ventilation.

Additionally, the shiny new gold firepole from the second floor descending to the vehicle bay area has an air closure system that only opens from a sensor just before a staff member is sliding down.

Keeping communication efficient and routes clear

Communication improvements are also key to the health of the firefighters and paramedics.

Currently when 911 receives an emergency call for fire or ambulance, all crew on duty at both the downtown and mountain stations are notified by radio or pager. That means everyone receives that adrenaline rush whether in the middle of the day or woken up during the night.

The new system will notify the station and teams needed, not disturbing sleeping personnel or the other station.

“Adding station alerting also improves the efficiency at Routt County Communications,” said DeRisio of the GPS-based, computer-aided dispatch system. “It allows efficiencies all the way down.”

Construction of the new fire station began in June 2023. The facility includes many video screens and digital readouts so that emergency responders can quickly view 911 information while gearing up.

If the downtown crews need to exit onto Lincoln Avenue, the new communication system will automatically stop street lights briefly for one block in either direction. High Point Drive near McDonald’s is the basic boundary defining which of the two stations responds to an emergency.

Right in the heart of everything

The new station also has a tower section on the west side of the building that was designed for training exercises in-house so that crews do not have to go off site to practice everything.

Examples of specific training scenarios include:

• Pulling a charged fire hose up flights of stairs
• Second-floor ladder rescue
• Simulated hole extraction

The tower also includes space to drain 100-foot fire hoses. Currently if the Mountain Fire Station staff at 2600 Pine Grove Road needs to drain hoses, the hoses must be transported to the downtown station.

Cerasoli and DeRisio said the department is extremely grateful to the voting public for passing the Referendum 2A two-mill property tax in November 2019 that helped the department increase personnel to handle a growing call volume and to build the station debt-free.

“Prior to that (tax), there wasn’t a fire engine staffed downtown, so only a single fire engine was staffed at the Mountain Station,” DeRisio said. “With that funding, we staffed a second engine, and we built a fire station.”

“The increased staffing, the addition of an engine and this station with its design are all going to contribute to reduced response times,” Cerasoli added.

DeRisio said site selection and brainstorming for design elements of the station started in October 2018 and included tours of other newer fire stations in Colorado. The lieutenant noted the location of the high-tech station was based on a heat map for call volume, population density and overall call locations.

The department has 39 full-time staff, including five administrative positions. The employees will be able to take advantage of the new station as the department plans to rotate crew home stations every six months, Cerasoli said.

The 1970s Ambulance Barn building at 911 Yampa St. will remain for use by the city’s wildland firefighting crew and Routt County Search and Rescue. The current downtown fire station space at 840 Yampa St. is leased by the city through June from Big Agnes.

The fire department leaders said they are hoping for a redesign of the Mountain Fire Station to start in 2026 with proposed construction in 2027-29.