North Liberty puts plan for second fire station on hold

NORTH LIBERTY — The city of North Liberty is looking into renovating its fire station, possibly in 2026 or 2027, rather than building a second fire station.

The move comes just a few years after the city bought land along St. Andrews Drive — across from Centennial Park — to build a second fire station.

North Liberty Fire Chief Brian Platz paused plans for the second station because of concerns about the department’s ability to staff both stations and because of the current station’s inadequacies.

“There's no doubt in my mind that we will need a fire station out there someday, but I think we need to be smart as far as our growth and not spread us too thin between two facilities, because that comes with its own host of problems,” Platz said.

The city has hired Shive-Hattery, an engineering and architectural firm, to explore options for renovating and/or adding onto the existing fire station at 25 W. Cherry St.

North Liberty City Council member Brent Smith said he appreciated the re-evaluation.

“Without that, we would have already broken ground with station two, and what (the fire department) is forecasting would have been a stretch of current resources that wouldn't have been sustainable,” he said.

Platz said the department receives the majority of its calls in the older part of the Johnson County city of 21,000, where the current station is located. He envisions a second station as more of a satellite facility and not the best location to serve the entire city.

Staffing plans

The North Liberty Fire Department had five full-time firefighters, including the chief, 18 part-time paid firefighters and around 15 unpaid volunteer firefighters.

The department is on pace to handle 1,700 calls for service this year, a total consistent with the past four years, Platz said.

The department’s minimum staffing is three firefighters on each 12-hour shift to run calls at any time.

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“With the current staffing plan, we still look to do one more part time expansion, but … we've noticed it's very difficult to make all of the schedules mesh.,” the chief said. “I'm not 100 percent certain that the next part-time expansion is going to work.”

During the day, the department has one full-time firefighter and one part-time firefighter work. The third person is either a volunteer firefighter or someone from the administrative staff. Platz said he still goes out on fire calls.

During the evening shift, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., there’s one full-time firefighter and two part-timers.

The department has received four federal grants to help with firefighter recruitment and retention over the past 16 years. The most recent grant, which the department will receive in November, is for $725,000. The grant will go toward salaries and a new volunteer stipend, with details yet to be determined.

The number of volunteer firefighters has declined from 35 to 15 in the past two years, Platz said.

“We have a lot of young people,” he said. “We get them when they're coming right out of high school or in college, and next thing you know, they've got a boyfriend or a girlfriend. They get a new job, they change their careers, they move away. So it's a very nomadic or revolving door kind of process for us, unfortunately.”

Given those realities, Platz concluded it wouldn’t be feasible to open a second facility at this time, but he hopes investing in the current station can help with staffing.

“It's my hope that a newer, contemporary facility will also then help with recruitment and bringing volunteers back into the fire department, even though we know that sometime down the road, this department will likely be a career (job) because the call volume (will) just go crazy once we get to a certain population,” Platz said.

The lieutenant’s office at the North Liberty Fire Department, shown Sept. 1, also serves as a locker room. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)

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Office space must be shared at the North Liberty Fire Department. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)

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Existing station’s problems

The existing fire station was never meant to have people in it 24/7, Platz said. The building has no sprinkler system, it is not ADA compliant and the living areas have poor ventilation.

Platz said the kitchen is small with minimal food storage space. Personnel must share office pace. There isn’t a dedicated training room, and the room where training and conferences are held is essentially a hallway, Platz said.

Rescue equipment and other fire gear are being stored on the floor or in offices due to lack of space on the firetrucks and other storage areas, Platz said.

Also, the station doesn’t have enough space for a modern aerial truck or a larger rescue truck.

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A fire at any building over three stories — North Liberty has more than 115 of those — would be a challenge for the department to respond to in an emergency with its current aerial equipment, Platz said.

In addition to space concerns, the station’s infrastructure isn’t best suited for a fire department. The building’s water line is only 2 inches, which Platz said makes it time-consuming to refill the water tanks in the trucks. The flooring also isn’t ideal.

“We run a lot of medical calls. We go into a lot of people's houses and apartments and just tracking those viruses and that bacteria back into a building with carpeting,” Platz said. “We shouldn't have carpeting in here. I mean, no contemporary fire station has carpeting in their building anymore.”

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Platz said the department has focused a lot on fire suppression training in the past five years and is continuing to expand training for other types of hazards and rescues.

“We're also finding that with a much bigger hospital in town and much bigger buildings coming to us, we've got more confined spaces in town,” he said. “We've got much more opportunity for high-angle rescue. We had a trench rescue last year. We're not fully prepared for those things as a fire department.”

Comments: megan.woolard@thegazette.com