A consultant has recommended a new fire station be built for the Aurora Fire Department.
The new station would be on the far northeast side of the city, where the consultant – Plug Ugly Solutions – also has recommended relocation of two existing stations.
The recommendation is contained in a 165-page study done by Plug Ugly and presented to the Aurora City Council recently.
“As the station location study shows, the present coverage for the East Side of the city, especially the northeast portion north of Interstate 88, is severely lacking,” said a memorandum to aldermen from Deputy Fire Chief David McCabe and Assistant Fire Chief Daniel Osman. “Current response times to many calls in those areas exceed the nationally accepted guidelines set by the National Fire Protection Association and Insurance Services Offices.”
The Aurora Fire Department first suggested the study in the 2020 budget, but due to economic concerns in the budget that year because of the pandemic, it was delayed to 2021.
The last new fire station in Aurora was built in 1998, when Station 12 was constructed at Eola and Hafenrichter roads. That year, the fire department had 11,053 calls, compared to almost 20,000 in 2021, McCabe and Osman wrote.
They pointed out that is an 80% increase in calls during that time, with only one additional ambulance added.
Aurora Fire Chief Gary Krienitz said the study was done so aldermen would understand the department’s needs for the future. He said department officials will be suggesting station building projects in upcoming budgets.
“We’re going to start moving forward with budgeting,” he said. “We wanted to show that we didn’t just throw darts on a board.”
Plug Ugly analyzed 69,000 calls from the past three years, and developed a zone for each of the city’s nine fire stations. The zones each station serves are based on the national standard of a four-minute travel time from when the station gets a call to when the first piece of apparatus is in service at the site.
The study shows that a fire doubles every 30 seconds from the time it starts, and for emergency medical situations, every second counts, officials said.
Given that, the study showed that the city should build a new station on the far northeast of the city, and relocate Fire Station 4, at 800 Michels Ave., and Fire Station 9, at 2339 Diehl Road.
While the study shows the ideal location for each station in the city, it also recognizes that the ideal location is not always available. So the study allows officials to begin looking for places as close to ideal spots as possible.
The city has nine fire stations, so the new one would be the 10th. But it would actually be called Fire Station 13. Because of relocation of former fire stations, and elimination of some, the stations are not always named in numerical order.
The entire 165-page study is available for download at the city’s website.
