Fire station reopens in Santa Rosa’s scarred Fountaingrove neighborhood

Santa Rosa's Fountaingrove neighborhood passed another milepost in its slow, uneven recovery from the Tubbs fire, opening this month a makeshift firehouse to replace the 3-year-old, $4 million station that was destroyed in the flames last October.

The temporary Station 5 opened last week at 3480 Parker Hill Road, the site of an old city firehouse that was also burned down in the fire.

The new station is equipped with little more than a tented garage that fits one engine, storage sheds for equipment and a modular office and sleeping quarters for an engine team of three firefighters.

“It's the bare necessities that we would need,” said Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal.

Its opening marks another step forward for the fire-ravaged area, which lost nearly 1,600 homes in the Tubbs fire.

Only six homes have been rebuilt in the neighborhood, less than 10 percent of the homes reconstructed across the city.

At the opening ceremony Dec. 21, Fire Chief Tony Gossner grabbed a bolt cutter and snipped a ribbon that hung in front of a fire engine as a dispatcher welcomed the station back into the firefighting fold.

For Fountaingrove resident Bruce McConnell, who is rebuilding his home, the opening of the temporary station is a welcome contribution to the neighborhood's recovery.

“It's one step closer to getting back to normal life,” he said.

The new station will mean shorter response times on calls for service across Santa Rosa, said Lowenthal. Calls from Fountaingrove and Hidden Valley have been pulling firefighters away from stations near Santa Rosa Junior College, Coffey Park or Rincon Valley, creating a trickle-down effect of longer response times elsewhere in the city, he said.

The temporary station will have an engine and three firefighters but won't be fully equipped and stocked like a normal firehouse, Lowenthal said.

The roughly $1 million temporary station was erected on the site of the old Parker Hill Road firehouse. That structure, plus the newer station located on Newgate Court and finished in 2015, were both burned down by the Tubbs fire.

It's unclear where a permanent Station 5 will be located, how much it will cost, or when it will be built. The city may rebuild the fully-insured Newgate Court station or rebuild it elsewhere.

Officials are weighing whether to add community meeting space to the new permanent firehouse. Some federal disaster relief money and grant funding on the future station is also on the table.

No deadline has been set for a decision.

“Before we make final decisions, we need to make clear what those (funding) options really look like,” said Jason Nutt, Santa Rosa's director of transportation and public works.

The city has estimated the cost of rebuilding the station on Newgate Court to be about $4.5 million, though the Federal Emergency Management Agency has come up with a cost of about $3.99 million, Nutt said.

Building the station at another location would incur many additional costs, he said.

Using FEMA money to defray the cost of a fire station rebuild at another Fountaingrove address is possible, but Nutt said the city is working with FEMA and the city's insurer to determine what is allowed and whether additional conditions would be imposed on the new firehouse.

Rebuilding the destroyed Parker Hill Road fire station is not in the cards, Nutt said. The city had considered selling the old station as surplus property prior to the fire, he added.

Nutt estimated the future fire station may open three to five years from now. He and Lowenthal noted that no formal timeline exists for the project given the numerous questions that have to be settled.

“Based on what we went through, we want to make sure it's well thought-out,” Lowenthal said. “We don't want to rush it.”

McConnell, a retired Santa Rosa chief financial officer and consultant, noted that while the temporary station was a bright spot for the neighborhood, the clearest sign of progress would more homes going up in the area.

That said, he appreciated the peace of mind of once again having a neighborhood fire station.

“Having them a lot closer could be the difference between somebody losing their life and not,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.