Columbia looks to fund Fire Station 5 replacement as station nears end of its lifespan
Nia Hinson
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The City of Columbia is looking to replace one of its busiest and oldest fire stations.
Columbia Fire Station 5 — located on Ballenger Lane — is nearing the end of its lifespan, according to Assistant Fire Chief Jeffrey Heidenreich, leading to the department to request a replacement.
“It’s becoming functionally obsolete when it comes to the fire service and the modern expectations and requirements on size, space and other necessities of stations,” Heidenreich said.
The city is now amending its fiscal year 2026 budget to include $6 million for a replacement, according to city spokeswoman Sydney Olsen. The funding will come from capital improvement sales tax investment income.
Ward 3 Councilwoman Jacque Sample told ABC 17 News she was told by a resident the building could have been built on an old coal mine. Sample said the city is now working to determine if that is the case.
“It’s really important for us to do a land survey to make sure that we don’t rebuild and have the same problems in the future,” Sample said. “I know the city is looking at digging into kind of some historical records to determine if that is the case and remap out where those potential old coal mines might be.”
Sample said it isn’t clear when the city will conduct the survey. The station was built in 1971 and is the third busiest station overall in the city. The only busier stations are located downtown and Fire Station 2 on Worley Street, according to Heidenreich.
However, the deteriorating and sinking conditions of the station is taking a toll on firefighters, who have to spend time documenting and repairing the station.
While the station is acceptable as far as current state and living conditions, Heidenreich said the department had to think about whether it makes sense to continue pouring money into the place.
“We’ve had to invest a considerable amount more in time and money addressing physical issues with the station,” Heidenreich said. “Multiple attempts at raising or stabilizing the foundation and concrete repairs that we haven’t had to do at other stations.”
ABC 17 News took a tour of the fire station, noticing several cracks in walls and floors, broken windows and brown spots in ceiling panels created from a build-up in humidity. Heidenreich said a moisture build-up in the attic drips into the ceiling tiles, creating the brown spots.
The tiles were replaced in December, and the department will have to replace them again soon to avoid running into issues with mold. Firefighters have also resorted to adding a fan hanging from the ceiling, as well as a dehumidifier to try and pull additional moisture from the attic to minimize damage to the ceiling.
The station had a major remodeling in 2019, but was stopped mid-progress due to station settling.
The station has continued to deal with those settling issues over the years, now leading to the recent sticking of a door within the station, as well as another door that wasn’t able to open or close until crews put in additional lag bolts.
Another issue the station is battling: The community bunk room. The room was a common practice in the fire service for a long period of time, but the trend has since moved to include individualized bunk rooms.
“As our workforce grows and the diversity of our workforce increases, we think it’s important to invest in individualized bunk rooms, or individualized rooms for our firefighters and our members for privacy and safety and sleeping concerns,” Heidenreich said.
Heidenreich said that was an issue for the fire department during the COVID-19 pandemic, as they weren’t able to separate firefighters from one another to prevent it from spreading.
The fire department also deals with discolored water coming from its sink and ice, as well as low water pressure that can become problematic when filling up their fire trucks.
The bay area has experienced problems of its own. Fire equipment has gotten substantially larger over time, including the firetrucks. Heidenreich said the trucks have become wider over the years, and the trucks have limited clearance up top and on the sides when parking in the bay.
Firefighters have made contact with the sides of the garage due to the issue, leading to visible damage to the garage.
“We’re talking about inches on each side of the truck every single time they go out,” Heidenreich said. “And since this is the busiest, single company house in the city, they’re running you know, sometimes 10, 15 calls a day coming in and out this bay.”
Firefighters also have to coordinate with one another when getting into the trucks, due to a lack of space in the bay when the door of the truck is opened. There is also severe settling and cracking on the bay floor, despite the concrete being replaced in 2023.
Heidenreich said other stations fire stations 4 and 6 are also on the decline, but station 5 has seen the worst of it. The department also wants to improve its reliability percentage, but is also running into problems with that.
“One of the next steps we take once a station and an engine become substantially busy to the point that the reliability slips under 90%… as an example, this station (fire station 5) is close to 80%. We look at the possibility of adding an additional staffed fire apparatus. And so for our deployment model that would be a ladder company, and a ladder company isn’t able to fit into stations 4, 5, and 6,” Heidenreich said.