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Weight, time take their toll on main fire station in Struthers
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Temporary repairs would cost $80,000 to $100,000, officials say.
STRUTHERS — The city’s 66-year-old main fire station on Elm Street wasn’t built to handle the weight of modern firefighting vehicles, and it’s beginning to show.
The main area of concern is a concrete block wall in the basement hallway under the station offices and immediately adjacent to the vehicle bays, according to an MS Consultants engineer, who did a walk-through inspection of the station earlier in the year.
There is a noticeable horizontal crack in the concrete block wall, most likely due to the lateral forces on the wall caused by the weight of firetrucks parked in the two bays above, said Gary J. Diorio of MS Consultants.
The trucks weigh a combined 70,000 pounds, said Fire Chief Harold Milligan Jr. When the station was built in 1943, trucks weighed about 15,000 pounds each, he said.
Though the vehicle bays are concrete slabs poured over earth, the sideways or lateral pressure of the weight is damaging the block wall. There is also evidence of water leaking into the hallway at the base of the wall and on the steps leading to the basement, which Milligan thinks is from a spring discovered on the site that was filled in when the station was built.
The station has also outlived its usefulness in other ways, said Milligan, who has been chief since 1980. It does not have sufficient office and training space or sleeping facilities. Neither does it have facilities for females, he said.
Struthers has a combination department consisting of 10 full-time employees, including the chief, and 25 volunteers, who staff its two stations: The main firehouse at 96 Elm St., and the other at 10 Frank Ave. The department has no female firefighters, but has had in the past, Milligan said.
The recommendation of MS Consultants is to not make a temporary fix until a full study is done to determine the cost effectiveness of a new fire station. The study would cost $5,000 to $8,000.
The affected wall could be supported with concrete pilasters at a cost of $80,000 to $100,000, but would be a “temporary solution at best” because of the age of the building, according to the engineer.
Struthers Safety-Service Director Ed Wildes agrees with Milligan that the station probably should be replaced at some point.
“When I was on City Council in the mid-1980s the flat roof was leaking and we put a gabled roof over the top. It was outliving its purpose at that time,” he said.
He said the administration is not sure how much of an emergency the deterioration is, but he wanted to bring it to the attention of council and the public.
The choices are: Fix it, build new someplace else and use the building for storage, or leave it as it is, he said.
Milligan said according to his professional fire fighting magazine that a new station could cost between $3 million and $5 million, an amount Wildes said the city does not have.
“We would have to seek a grant. Maybe there is federal stimulus money for such a project. If they have money to build a water park, surely a fire station might fit, maybe with Homeland Security,” he said.
alcorn@vindy.com