Bids came in lower than the budgeted amount, Dalsing said, which allowed the department to do further repairs to Station No. 6.

The entryway at Station No. 6 will soon get a face-lift as well. Dalsing said the Fire Department regularly makes repairs to all of its stations.

The Downtown station was built in the 1940s, and several of the fire stations in St. Joseph were built in the early 1900s.

The Fire Department has plans to build two new fire stations, replacing two of the city’s oldest fire station buildings: No. 9 will move to 3200 Faraon St., and No. 11 is moving to South 22nd Street, near Walnut Street.

When: Sat. Sept. 10 from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Where: 200 Front Street Franklin, TN

The woman's brakes either failed or her foot somehow missed the brake pedal, Neubauer said. She and her passenger, a child, were both taken to a local hospital to be checked out for minor injuries, the sergeant said.

Two fire engines worked out of the fire station, which was being secured with wooden panels by a crew from A.E. Fickert. A structural engineer is planned to inspect the facility, built in 1953, to assess the structural damage, a Jefferson Twp. fire official said.

The current station is staffed with a three-man crew. The new station, which city officials estimate will open next summer, will have the same size crew.

The new station will allow the city to better protect a growing number of commercial and residential developments on the city's northwest side, as well as respond to incidents in Cape Girardeau County through mutual-aid agreements.

Ennis said the station on Kurre Lane is "cramped" not only with living space for firefighters but in terms of housing firetrucks.

The existing station barely can house two firetrucks. The new station will have three double bays that can handle up to six vehicles.

The drone is painted fire-engine red, and officials joked that they had considered having “Keep Back 200 Feet” emblazoned on it, just like on the trucks. The drone weighs only about eight pounds, but it is a far more sophisticated device than the ones used by weekend hobbyists. Costing $85,000, it captures both standard video and infrared images.

"That tool for a chief is just night and day from what it was not just 30 years ago when I started, but 15 years ago,” Daniel A. Nigro, the New York fire commissioner, said. "And moving forward, technology like this is a terrific advantage for us and for fire departments around the country."

The department's efforts to use technology intensified after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when fire officials realized the shortcomings commanders faced in trying to take stock of a chaotic scene.

Since then, the department has added an operations center at its headquarters with a wall of monitors displaying calls from around the city and, on a recent morning, a live stream from a police helicopter with a close-up of a man threatening to jump from the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge.

The Command Tactical Unit, which deploys firefighters with cameras to try to get different perspectives of a fire, once responded to fires in a refurbished ambulance because the equipment was so bulky. Now, members of the unit are dispatched with a backpack loaded with a tablet, a smartphone and a Wi-Fi hot spot device.