To facilitate completion of Station No. 1, City Council members on Monday signed off on a $20,000 contract with Savannah-based Trison Service Inc. to install cables and fiber. The vote is one of the last required for the station, which is now on the path for an early completion, said Simmons, who spoke by phone from an inspection of one of five new fire trucks the city has purchased.

The chief said that while initial estimates had put the new Station No. 1 at completion by this fall, it now appears the new facility near the city recreation park on South Rogers Street will be complete in mid-August. The station will replace the former Station No. 1, which is being converted into a courtroom on the site of the city’s forthcoming municipal complex on U.S. 80.

City officials voted at the end of last year to award the contract for construction of the new Station No. 1 — a $1.5 million expense being paid for out of special purpose local option sales tax funds.

Anniston Fire Chief Tony Taylor said the department moved into the new 9,800-square-foot station last week, but plans called for the addition of that four-story drill tower to be located behind the station. Taylor said construction of the tower is to begin before August and be completed in October.

Anniston Fire Department is a certified regional training site and an extension of the Tuscaloosa-based Alabama Fire College, Taylor said. Most of the cost to a fire department in training firefighters is travel and lodging during training, Taylor said, so having more of these regional training facilities saves departments money.

The council in October approved the approximately $2 million new station, which was built at the site of the old Marvin’s hardware and building supply store. The new three-bay station includes living quarters and a 25-person classroom.

The station closed earlier in 2016 after it was condemned, leaving the Kingston neighborhood to deal with increased fire response times because of the lack of a station. April Odom with the Mayor’s Office said in a release that the station has been on the city council agenda three times in the past four weeks as part of the list of phase 2 bond projects.

Firefighters park their trucks in what’s called the “defensive parking position” to help protect the first responders and the rest of the scene.

Defensive parking means the truck is parked at a diagonal to shut down a lane, or on smaller roads, block the roadway all together. Firefighters say often times drivers try to take pictures or videos of a crash, and this distracted driving leads to other chain reaction crashes.