1 The San Francisco (CA) Fire Department’s new floating Fire Station No. 35 is a two-story, 14,900-square-foot structure built on a 1,650-ton float to make it less susceptible to earthquakes and rising sea levels. (Photos courtesy of San Francisco Public Works.)

2 The new floating fire station replaces the land-based 105-year-old historic fire station, which will still house Engine 35 while its crew will work out of the new station.

3 Public artwork is included on the station site as part of an observation area open to the public 24/7.

Public Works managed the design-build project on behalf of the fire department, Ryor points out, with the work being carried out by Swinerton-Power, the joint venture team of Swinerton, Power Engineering Construction Company, Shah Kawasaki Architects, and Liftech Consultants.

Ryor notes the two-story structure is built on top of a 173-foot-long by 96-foot-wide steel float that weighs 1,650 tons and is anchored by four guide piles. The design allows the structure to rise and fall with the natural tides of the bay, king tides, and projected sea level rise.

Lea Olson, principal with Liftech, says the engineering challenges centered around the fact that the floating fire station had to be designed to meeting cruise liner acceleration. “The float will always be moving in the wind and the waves,” Olson says, “so it had to meet the motion criteria used in a cruise ship. The four piles hold the float in place, and they are designed with a dampening system of rubber pads between steel plates that sit between the float and the piles.”

The first floor of the floating fire station has a rescue bay with a boat