Goodyear Fire Station No. 186

Fire Station 186 is one of two fire stations for the City of Goodyear designed to improve response times and ensure the health and safety of firefighters and crews inside the station.

The recently completed Goodyear Fire Station 186 is one of the country’s first fire stations designed and built around firefighter health. The dangerous contaminants and materials encountered by firefighters and the resulting increase in cancer diagnosis was a main driver of the design. The building design concept began with a zoned approach to defining areas of the building related to high (hot), medium (warm), and low (cold) hazard contaminants exposure. This design approach encourages the separation and control of carcinogens as occupants move through the various spaces.

Several of these new features include:

• A large canopy on the rear apron allows the crew to wash down the apparatus before bringing them into the bays.
• A middle zone that separates the living quarters from the apparatus bays and turnout gear areas.
• A decontamination corridor that allows firefighters to decontaminate their gear from the outside upon returning to the station.
• A personnel decontamination area that leads to individual bathroom stalls, allowing them to rinse off contaminants before entering the living quarters.

Apparatus bays are equipped with both mass extraction and a direct plymovent system to ensure any contaminants that do enter are evacuated efficiently. The living spaces are further separated from the apparatus bays with negative pressure vestibules that serve as airlocks. These steps were taken to create a living environment for the firefighters that will reduce, if not eliminate, additional exposure to the carcinogens that are unfortunately unavoidable in today’s structure fires.

In addition to the health amenities, the design includes several training opportunities built into the station. These training tools provide the crews an ability to improve their skills on-site without the expense of leaving the station. While this does not remove the need for complete training off-site, it does make the firefighters better prepared to do their job resulting in increased safety for the crews and the community.