WOODLAND — The Woodland fire station is old.
At nearly every turn in the building constructed in 1971, there is a sign of the station’s aging, whether it’s a piece of Woodland history — like photos of then-President Bill Clinton’s visit after the flood of 1996 — or a water-damaged bubbly spot on the wall.
One noteworthy spot that crews at the station like to point out is a crack in the station’s bay that allows in light on particularly sunny days. The crack is near the spot of perhaps the most infamous break in the station’s 47 years: the former site of the fire pole.
Sometime around 2001, a second-grade class was visiting, and a firefighter climbed up to the third floor of the building to show them how to use the fire pole. The firefighter was wearing some equipment that made it hard to slow down, so he flew down the pole and broke both of his ankles in front of the students.
Crews stopped using the pole shortly after, and it was later removed completely.
Woodland firefighters, who are part of Clark County Fire & Rescue, will leave their historic station at 100 Davidson Ave. behind in the coming days, as they are expected to move into a new station on East Scott Avenue on Monday or Tuesday. The new station is one level and won’t have a fire pole.
It will be the first time the city’s fire service isn’t located downtown, but the new, nearly $1.3 million station is more centrally located for the station’s service area and was actually built as a fire station. The current station once housed the fire department, police department, city council chambers and mayor’s office. Now, only the fire department and some storage of city documents are in the building. There aren’t set plans for what to do with the station once the department moves.
“This place is big, but not well built out,” Clark County Fire & Rescue Division Chief of Operations Mike Jackson said. “It wasn’t designed to be a 24-hour fire house.”
The Woodland Fire Department started offering 24-hour service out of the station in 2010, and it merged with Clark County Fire & Rescue in 2013. On Thursday, Jackson had some of the original crew members, who worked out of the station when it started offering 24-hour service, come back for one last shift at the station.
Kenny Bjur, 34, started at the station as a volunteer when he was 17, and Nick Maunu, 31, and Greg Pera, 32, both started as 19-year-old interns in Woodland. None of them work primarily out of the Woodland station now, but all are excited for the new one to open.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Maunu said.
Plans for the station go back to at least 2004, Jackson said, when there was talk of building a public safety complex on the site for the fire and police departments. The Woodland Police Department got a new station in 2013 using money from construction bonds. The city used some money leftover from that and a second bond for approximately $500,000 to build the new fire station, according to City Administrator Pete Boyce.
Once the firefighters move, they will once again work close to the police department, like they did when they all shared space in the old station. The new fire station won’t have a jail cell, like the current one does, though.
While the new station is more centrally located for coverage, the firefighters said the old station put them in the center of action for a lot of city events.
“There was always a lot of public coming through the old station,” Bjur said. “When they did concerts over the summer, you could hear it right across the street.”
They were also near a few bars downtown, which led to a few people sneaking over and taking radios out of fire engines parked out back.
Being downtown also meant tighter spaces, making it difficult to maneuver with a fire truck. To park the truck at the station, Pera said they had to stop traffic in both directions to drive across Davidson Avenue and back it in. Occasionally, drivers would try to sneak behind the fire engine before it could back up.
“We had some close calls,” Pera said. “One time a driver was flying around the corner (from Goerig Street) while I was pulling out, and they didn’t see me until it was almost too late. They stopped a few feet from my door.”
The new station has more room for the engines to move around, as well as some other much-desired upgrades. The building is more seismically sturdy, as Jackson said he’s not sure if the old station would survive an earthquake at this point. The new station also has a backup generator and fire sprinklers on the roof, neither of which the old station has.
“We want other buildings to be protected,” Jackson said. “We want ours to be protected the same.”
Jackson said there’s no time line or price set for the next phase of the new station. When the department moves in, the working and living space will be in a temporary home. The next phase will double the size of the station and build a permanent living space.
“It’s a solid step in the right direction,” Jackson said. “We could spend a lot of money on (the old station) and it still wouldn’t be fitted well as a fire station. Instead, we’re investing in a long-term solution.”
