In the first step in an extensive overhaul of the Marin County Fire Department’s facilities in West Marin, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved funds to draft plans for a complete tear-down and rebuild of the Tomales Fire Station. The 45-year-old facility’s rebirth would figure into a broader effort to reconstruct stations in Woodacre, Hicks Valley and Point Reyes Station over the next few decades.
“Life was really simple when this building was established,” said Senior Captain Tom Nunes, a Tomales native who has worked for the fire department since 1988. “But the amount of technical knowledge and services we’re required to master now has evolved. The one thing that has fallen behind is the facility.”
Built in 1971, the station was designed according to the county’s resident fire warden model, in which one firefighter equipped with a single engine managed a crew of local volunteers. Now, the department’s services have expanded from brushfire and structural fire containment to include emergency medical support and water rescue, prompting officials to seek more spacious facilities to accommodate additional equipment and manpower.
Capt. Nunes and other officials are set to meet with architects next month to start hashing out blueprints and a timeline for construction, which they aim to have finished in 2018. Where the station’s staff and equipment will be placed temporarily is undecided, Capt. Nunes said, adding that he has approached a local landowner about the prospect of hosting the team. “We’re still early in the process,” he said. “But so far with all the preliminary conversation, it feels good.”
Priced at $581,732, the contract was awarded on Tuesday to RossDrulisCusenberry Architecture, Inc., which also designed the renovation of Health and Human Services’ West Marin Service Center. Though plans for the Tomales station are in the brainstorming phase, the fire department has pegged the construction budget at around $6 million—a drop in the bucket of the $50 million or so it wants for all of its renovations in West Marin.
Those projects, part of a 2010 vision plan, entail a demolition and rebuild of the Hicks Valley Fire Station; a seismic upgrade and expansion to accommodate sheriff operations and a community meeting room in the Point Reyes Fire Station; and a relocation of department headquarters from the present site off Castle Rock Road in Woodacre to a more central location somewhere within the Sir Francis Drake Boulevard corridor.
The vision plan calls for bigger stations to house engine sizes and fleets that have grown over the last 30 years, as well as national modern staffing standards and increased services.
Not all are pleased with the Tomales rebuild. At a budget hearing on Wednesday, Supervisor Steve Kinsey bashed the cost, asking what causes “relatively simple garages with a frat hall to cost $6 million? It’s not right,” he said.
Over the years, the Tomales station, set on an acre of hillside on Dillon Beach Road, has tacked on three garages that house a brushfire truck, a water truck and a utility pickup towing a jet ski. The primary port stores two classic Type 1 hook-and-ladder trucks. For Capt. Nunes, the new station would gather all trucks and equipment into one space. That consolidation would provide more room to hold public workshops on first-aid and volunteer training for the nascent Tomales Disaster Council. An extra room for equipment and gear decontamination would also provide a buffer between the fume-filled primary port and the living quarters, which are currently separated by a door.
The department also wants to increase the station’s numbers from four firefighters during summer and two in winter to six year-round. The larger crew would help boost water-rescue capabilities, which went fully online last year and since then have been tapped frequently as more kayakers and boaters become stranded in the choppy waves of Tomales Bay. Last year, the department conducted six rescue operations in the bay, including of 54 kayakers caught in shifting winds and high tides during a bioluminescence tour last September.
“It seems we’re putting on wet suits now more than anything,” Department Chief Jason Weber said. “We need to make sure we design a facility that leads us into the future and doesn’t present challenges to our service.”