TAMPA, Fla. — Firefighters who cover Palm River have a new home base. Hillsborough County Fire Rescue cut the ribbon Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 28, on the firehouse the department calls Station 15. Its address is 6212 12th Ave. S. in Tampa.
The building takes over for the old Palm River station, which sits a few minutes away and had been in service for about 60 years. A department spokesman, Rob Herrin, said the new station is meant to keep crews safer and help them answer calls in the neighborhood more quickly.
The two-bay station houses a fire engine and a rescue ambulance, and five full-time firefighters will staff it on every 24-hour shift. Construction cost $5.6 million, paid for with federal pandemic recovery money the county received under the American Rescue Plan.
Much of the design is about firefighter health. Each firefighter gets a private bunk room. Crews coming back from a fire pass through a decontamination area with showers and laundry before they reach the living quarters, so smoke residue and other cancer-causing material stay out of the space where they eat and sleep. Herrin said older stations had no such barrier, and crews tracked that residue inside.
Even the alarm is different. Instead of a sudden blast, the station’s alert system starts softly and grows louder, waking sleeping crews gradually, which the county says is easier on their physical and mental health.
The opening is one piece of a much larger build-out. County Fire Rescue answers roughly 140,000 emergency calls a year, and its master plan calls for 20 more stations to be built within 24 years as the county keeps growing.
Section: More Tampa FL crime news
Filed under: Tampa FL Public Safety News
