Estimated cost of repairing city fire station triples

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Orange and Brown
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Estimated cost of repairing city fire station triples

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WRITTEN BY DAVID DEWITT
THURSDAY, 01 OCTOBER 2009 08:52

The cost of emergency repairs to the Columbus Road fire station has now gone up from $50,000 to $150,000, Athens City Council announced Monday at a committee meeting.

The repairs are meant to physically reinforce the fire station, which already has seen two engineering studies and roughly $180,000 worth of work. Athens Fire Chief Bob Troxel said that even after these initial repairs, the station was notified that the building was still 200 percent over its weight capacity. This led to two trucks being taken out of the bays in the station and council approving additional repair funds.

City Council approved $50,000 in funds last week after only one reading, declaring a “real and present emergency” in the ordinance. That measure must now be amended to include the additional $100,000.

“This is a safety repair and a temporary [solution] given the age and location of the fire station,” Third Ward council member Nancy Bain said. “Temporary being a 10-year window because it’s going to take a while to get all those things worked out.”

Bain said that the city had to do the repairs for the safety of employees.

“We need to have this station fixed,” Bain said. “It may be in the wrong place. It may be in a slip-prone place. It may be a terrible design. But the thing that’s so interesting is that in today’s world, 2009, you would not have a station like that built on that kind of slide.”

The fire station is located on a hill, which has caused much of the trouble. Bain referred to the station as “a money pit, in a way.”

Bain, other council members and Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl all suggested that a new station would eventually be needed, even going so far as to discuss possible locations.

Wiehl said that the repairs would include the installation of steel columns and beams.

“It’s an old station,” he said. “The next thing we’d talk about is do we acquire land? How do we do that? Where would be the location?”

City Service-Safety Director Paula Moseley told council last week that the city had hired MS Consultants, Inc. of Columbus to test the structural integrity of the building.

“They’re coming back with a recommendation to install carbon-fiber strips and do a rework of the facade beam around the roof,” Moseley said at the time.

The consultants seem confident in the use of the carbon-fiber strips, which will be installed in the building’s floors, Moseley told council.

“Now, is there going to be ongoing maintenance to the old structure? There will be,” she said. “There will have to be. But they do believe that this will indeed bring it up to safe standards.”

The Columbus Road station acts as the city Fire Department’s main headquarters, while a south-side station is situated on Richland Avenue. Because of the structural problems of the main building, the city’s heavy rescue truck was moved to the south-side building.

Chief Troxel has said that the original work and engineering studies were intended to correct weight issues at the station stemming from its position on a hill. After completion of the work on the station, he added, the engineering company, MS Consultants, Inc., assured him that everything was fine.

When the Fire Department started looking into purchasing a new ladder truck, Troxel said, it contacted the engineering company, which sent a letter back declaring the station 200 percent over capacity. The new ladder truck has been estimated to cost around $1 million and is expected to be purchased sometime in the next year.

The fire chief has long been an advocate of a new fire station, as a result of growth in the city and the obligation to provide fire service to Ohio University, which also has grown substantially over the past 25 years. The station on Columbus Road was built in 1965. The engineering studies began, Troxel explained, because the building was cracking and large chunks of concrete were falling from it.


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