Emily Cutts
Post-Bulletin
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Years after being shuttered, the old Silver Lake Fire Station is once again housing firefighters in an effort to keep firefighters healthy during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Rochester Fire Department’s Engine 16 has been at the station for more than a week following approximately $1,200 of work and purchases to bring the space back to something that could be used as a fire station.
“The big fear was, how do you continue to do your mission when you don’t have a full workforce, when you don’t have enough people to do it,” Fire Chief Eric Kerska said about the department’s need for more space to social distance.
“So we started out searching for three locations so that we could put each of the crews in a separate location. That way, if a crew got exposed it would only take out that one crew.”
The Rochester Fire Department has five stations. Station 1, on South Broadway near downtown, houses three crews and a battalion chief and Station 4, on 41st Street Northwest, houses two crews while the remaining fire stations only have one crew each.
The move also fits into the city’s overall strategy of preserving community lifelines, according to Ken Jones, director of emergency management for the city of Rochester.
‘We do everything together’
On a normal pre-pandemic day at Station 1, two engine companies, a ladder company and a battalion chief would be at the station, which translates to 10 to 13 people.
“We do everything together,” firefighter Chad Kuhlman said. “We cook together, we clean together, we exercise together. Everything that we do, we do together as a crew.”
Moving one crew to Silver Lake station allows the firefighters to give each other a little more space to social distance.
“We owe it to our public and the people that we serve that we are not bringing things into people’s houses unnecessarily,” Kuhlman said.
In addition to the temporary move, firefighters have also been wearing face masks while on duty inside the station unless they are in their own bunk rooms. Shift change has also been modified because of the pandemic. Instead of a trickle-in of oncoming firefighters starting at 7 a.m., there is now a “hard” shift change.
All oncoming firefighters wait outside the station until 8 a.m. shift change. At that time, one of the apparatus bay doors opens and the entire off-coming crew will walk out with their masks on, Kuhlman said. The crew ending their shift has already put away their gear and cleaned the station, too. The two crews keep their distance from one another and if any information needs to be passed along, it can still be done during the transition.
Looking toward the future
How long will Engine 16 stay at the Silver Lake Station? It’s not yet known. Kerska said the department is basing the decision off social distancing guidelines from the state. He said it may change if the department were to get to a point where the firefighters were tested and found to have the coronavirus antibodies.
Even after they leave, Kerska said, the department is in talks with the parks department to keep the changes in place for at least a year in case of another wave or need again for the space to distance.
As Jones put it, the fire department is still in the response phase.
“There will be a recovery phase that comes and we don’t know what sort of guidelines will be handed down,” he said.
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