Small and rural fire stations face challenges in keeping facilities sized for meeting response times, ensuring long-term firefighter health, and creating flex space for changes from volunteer to blended staff arrangements. Mitigating the high risk of firefighters cross-contaminating personal items with harmful toxins is critical in upgrading facilities. As necessary, designing buildings that recognize the changing staffing patterns and expanding apparatus sizes is necessary.

The session will share ideas for applying the proven Hot Zone approach to station design to support firefighter health and safety and ideas for incorporating flex space to help morph the space with changing staffing models.