By Alan M. Petrillo
San Francisco, California, always has been unique in a number of ways, being the home of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, and Fisherman’s Wharf. And now the city can claim another world first—the San Francisco (CA) Fire Department’s new floating fire station, Fire Station No. 35, which replaced a 105-year-old station on land.
The new 14,900-square-foot fire station was designed as a floating structure to be less susceptible to earthquakes and rising sea levels. The existing fire station at Pier 22½ is an historic landmark, and the adjoining pier structure was significantly undersized and outdated, not meeting the fire department’s maritime operational needs or current seismic safety standards.
M. Magdalena Ryor, principal project manager at San Francisco Public Works Project Management Bureau, says that Fire Station No. 35, as the world’s first floating fire station, “presented unique challenges to us because there were no precedents to go by. We were trailblazers, and that was the largest challenge we had to face, but we had great consultants and engineers who worked together to make the station a reality.”
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
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Posted: Jan 5, 2023
Sutphen—Cicero (NY) Fire District SL75 aerial quint. Monarch cab and chassis; Cummins L9 450-hp engine; Hale Qmax 2,000-gpm pump; 500-gallon polypropylene water tank; 75-foot rear-mount aerial; Harrison 10-kW generator. Dealer: Scott Leavery and Nick Catalino, Vander Molen Fire Apparatus Sales and Service, Syracuse, NY.
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