After a year of construction and over a decade of planning, the new Emporia Fire Station 1 is ready for operations.
The operational status of the new EFD headquarters was signified by a ceremonial uncoupling of a water hose, which is the firefighting equivalent of a ribbon cutting, according to Emporia Fire Chief Brandon Beck, who spoke with KVOE News at the facility’s grand opening celebration Sunday afternoon. In addition to the uncoupling, the ceremony featured remarks from EFD and City of Emporia leadership, as well as those who oversaw construction of the facility before the station was opened up to the community for guided tours.
Chief Beck called the day “positively overwhelming.”
KVOE News was offered a chance to take such a tour and observed the various amenities included in the new station, including a decontamination area to help reduce the spread or impact of carcinogens, which was a major piece of the project as we have reported over the last year and a half. Also included are new alert systems, which Chief Beck says are softer than the previous system inside the former space at White Auditorium, allowing firefighters to wake up more peacefully than before, noting that this can make a big difference in an emergency.
Also included in nearly every space is a mapping system that keeps track of where units or emergencies are throughout the county or city, giving the department more “self-awareness” than before.
Construction on the new station began just over a year ago and progressed rapidly, something Crosslands Construction Pre-Construction Manager Evan Malloy says is and not common. He tells KVOE News that a big reason for the efficiency of the project was the amount of incorporation his team had in the design phase of the project.
While physical work took a little over a year, discussions and planning for the project had been in the works for over a decade. Emporia City Manager Trey Cocking came into the city in the midst of said conversations back in 2021 and has stated it is the first project he remembers diving into in his current role.
Noting the lack of space and age, 85 years to be exact, of the previous fire station 1, Cocking said a lot of the credit for the new station becoming a reality goes to past city leadership who saw a major need and took the necessary steps to address it.
With station one now completed, attention shifts to the second phase of the Emporia Fire facility update project at station two on Industrial Road, physical work for which began just over a week ago. According to Malloy, the project should take just over a year to complete and will be done in two stages.
Malloy says station two will have some similarities to station one internally, but, like station one, the new additions and updates are being done to make sure station two still fits into the area in which it is located.
Click here for a YouTube Short of Sunday’s uncoupling ceremony.
Photos by Tagan Trahoon/KVOE NewsÂ
