The 1960 building needed repairs. Repairs would have been less expensive than a new building but there were enough other issues to make a new building the more desirable course. Number one is the consolidation of all emergency services in one building. For all auto accidents both fire and ambulance respond. For ambulance calls where the patient is heavy or moving them is diffucult (up or down stairs, for example) firemen are called upon to help. At house fires, it may become the policy for the ambulance to respond and stand by (oxygen, warmth). Being together in one building may encourage cross training and would certainly make that training easier.

And then there is equipment. New OSHA standards dictate that all firemen must ride inside the truck. So trucks are longer. And new equipment is bigger. Compare a 1950's truck and a 1980 truck; the 2005 trucks are bigger still. Look at the picture above. Notice the difference in the widths of the doors.

Parking a truck in the large bay on the right was, for safety reasons, a two man job. The clearance fore and aft of the truck is two feet and five feet respectively. New trucks would not fit in that bay. And backing through the smaller bay doors was almost a safety issue just getting through them.

For the tanker, which parks in the north bay (one of the narrow ones), there isn't much room at all. Any maintenance or equipment inspection was almost impossible without pulling the truck out. The trim on the south side of the door was ripped out by someone backing in a quarter of an inch too far to the south.