The Board of Works opened bids from two companies vying for a contract to supply firefighters with the latest self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) equipment.

Bids were from Douglas Safety Systems of Sandford, Mich., at a cost of $814,035 and Five Alarm Fire of Merrillville at a cost of $890,147. The bids were taken under advisement and a contract will be awarded at the board's next meeting.

Portage Assistant Fire Chief Tim Sosby said 90 percent of the funding will come from a regional grant awarded to the city through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security-Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program. The city received the $785,882 grant last August.

The funds will allow Portage, Chesterton, Ogden Dunes, South Haven, Burns Harbor and Porter to add the latest in SCBA technology to the department.

"All the SCBAs we are using are at least two safety units behind," said Sosby, adding the new equipment will include an accountability system. The accountability system will allow incident commanders to monitor a firefighter's oxygen level remotely and notify a firefighter when his oxygen tank is getting low.

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Firefighters will soon move from Oviedo Fire Station 2 to make way for the State Road 434 expansion.

However, firefighters do not know where they will work when their building is gone.

"They've got a tight time table," said Chief Lars White of Oviedo Fire Department.

In 2013, the state paid $2 million for its downtown station and the city's community center, and it set a deadline for firefighters to vacate by the end of 2015.

In the future, the firefighters from Station 2 will work out of a superstation, but it is still under construction and White said it is behind schedule.

The Florida Department of Transportation gave Oviedo fire a two-month extension to stay put until the end of next month.

Workers will then start the multi-million dollar renovation of State Road 434.

Firefighters will have to double up in one of the city's other two stations, but which one is not determined yet.

"We're strategizing right now with some response times," White said.

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The soil below the city-owned spot selected for a new fire station in north Augusta isn’t up to the task of bearing the weight of the new station and the heavy fire trucks that would be kept there.

Rather than abandon the lot and plans to build a station there within a year, city staff recommends spending about $500,000 to install structural steel pilings extending at least 60 feet down to provide a solid base for the fire station and the concrete floors that will bear the weight of water-filled firetrucks and ambulances.

City Manager William Bridgeo said there were no signs the soil wasn't up to the task of supporting the weight of a fire station until the city had test borings done as part of the engineering for the site which revealed "soupy" clay soil.

"They did test pits where they went 10 feet down, and it's soup," Bridgeo said of the discovery of soil conditions at the site off Leighton Road across the street from its intersection with Anthony Avenue. "Then they went 20 feet down, still soup. Then they brought in the (drilling equipment) and went down 30, 40, 50, then 60 feet before they finally hit bedrock."

If the building weren't a fire station where heavy firetrucks will be kept, the pilings might not be needed, as the soil may be stable enough to support lighter-duty structures such as a home or one- or two-story office buildings, said Bridgeo and Ralph St. Pierre, finance director and assistant city manager. But engineers expressed concern the concrete floor of the new station could crack if built on the unstable soil with heavy firetrucks constantly rolling in and out of the station and across the floors.

"When you put a massive firetruck with a tankful of water rolling back and forth, back and forth, there's a good chance you're going to end up with cracks," Bridgeo said. "And this building is being built for 75 to 100 years of use, so it's prudent to get it right from the get-go."

The projected budget of $3.6 million for the new station doesn't include the recently discovered need for about $500,000 worth of pilings to stabilize the site.

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The City of Sacramento has increased fire and ambulance services in Natomas and South Sacramento. 

The Sacramento Fire Department has added a ladder truck in Natomas and an ambulance on Franklin Boulevard.

Sac Fire's Chris Harvey says previously, the closest ladder truck to the area was three-and-a-half miles.

"The importance of adding a truck out there is we now have several buildings that are over three, four, five stories tall. So, in event of major fire, you need a truck company in order to have that ladder to get up on the roof."

Harvey says some of the city's ambulances are responding to too many calls.

"The national standard for call volume for an ambulance should be right around 3,000-to-3,500 calls per -year, per-ambulance and we have four ambulances in the city of Sacramento that ran over 6,000 calls last year."

Four other ambulances responded to 5,000 calls last year.

The ambulance and two firefighters per shift will staff Station 57 at a cost of about half-a-million dollars annually.

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