BY ALAN M. PETRILLO

The South River (NJ) Fire Department is a volunteer department with 70 firefighters operating out of a single station located in a flood-prone area in the borough of South River. The fire department had been talking with the borough council and mayor about the need for a new firehouse for a number of years, but it took Hurricane Sandy in 2012 to get things moving much more quickly on the drive for a new station.

“Our existing firehouse was nearly 100 years old,” says Art Londensky, South River Fire Department’s fire marshal. “On one side of the old building, we had to put down metal road plates to prevent the floor from caving in because of the weight of the pumpers. On the other side of the station, you couldn’t walk around the ladder tower in the bay because it was so tight to the walls. With 70 personnel using the fire station, there were only two toilets and two sinks in the building, and there was no place for firefighters to decon, so they had to decon at home.”

When Hurricane Sandy hit, the fire station was in danger of being flooded. “The water was about a half a block away, so we were getting ready to evacuate the station,” Londensky says, “and when the South River crested, the water was almost to the front door of the firehouse. After that, the mayor and council agreed on the need for a new fire station headquarters.”

PLANNING

Londensky says the department formed a committee that included firefighters with various areas of expertise, such as plumbers, electricians, a laundry technician, and others, to research architectural firms that specialize in building fire stations. “We sent out requests for qualifications and got back 15 responses,” he says. “We narrowed them down to six, interviewed all six, and chose Mitchell Associates Architects.”

Bob Mitchell, principal in Mitchell Associates, says the fire department and borough council wanted to be sure that the new station would be built out of the flood-prone area of the borough. “The borough is 95 percent built out, with much of it located in the flood plain,” Mitchell points out. “Determining a new site became a complicated two-year process. They initially selected a site in a gracious residential area, and in spite of a design that nicely fit the residential neighborhood, citizen opposition to the site was overwhelming,” Mitchell says. That sent the station committee and borough council on the hunt for another suitable location. Londensky notes that the borough owns the fire station and all of the apparatus and equipment, while the department supplies the volunteer firefighters to staff the apparatus. “There weren’t a lot of places where we could put a 21,388-square-foot fire station,” he says, “but the borough eventually located a combined parcel of a former Knights of Columbus property and a gasoline station.”

After environmental and geotechnical analyses of the combi