Chestnuthill Township hosted an open house of its new Shared Emergency Services Facility on Route 715 on Saturday.

The $11 million facility was designed by MKSD Architects in Allentown, and David Albright, the business manager for Chestnuthill, said the township was able to get $4 million in grants for the project.

This project didn’t happen overnight. It took a long time.

Albright said a consultant did a needs assessment in 2013 to determine if the West End Fire Company building needed to be updated or replaced.

Michael Manfre Jr., the fire chief for the West End Fire Company and assistant road master for the Chestnuthill Township Roads Department, said, “This has been talked about for many years.”

Now that it is here, he’s thrilled.

“Everything’s been working out great. It’s a hundred times, a thousand times better,” Manfre said. “Our trucks fit. We can clean. We’re not dealing with broken equipment. Everything is here under one roof.”

The fire company still has its former building across the street, but this is their main one now.

Manfre explained what shared facilities means.

“It’s not just a fire company in this building,” he said. “The township owns (the building), so the fire company is part of it. Lehigh Valley EMS is in here as well, and the township also has an emergency operations center in here, so it’s kind of three entities under one roof.”

Lehigh Valley Health Network EMS relocated one of its offices to the center and is manned 24/7, Manfre said.

The Emergency Operations Center is designed to give emergency management coordinators from other local municipalities a central location to work in and to provide an alternative site, if needed, for the Monroe County Control Center or Office of Emergency management.

Albright said, “Jackson, Polk, Eldred, Ross and Hamilton townships have expressed an interest in working with us and coordinating with us at the shared emergency operations center.”

Albright added that the township didn’t ask any of the other municipalities for any financial contributions toward building the facility.

The building consists of two separate sections that are two-stories tall with a one-story midsection between them. Each of the three sections is easily identifiable, just by looking at the carpeting. Although it’s gray, one color is added to the pattern in each.

Albright said red is in the section for the fire department. Blue is for LVHN EMS, while green is in the Emergency Operations Center, which is full of office spaces, meeting rooms, a conference room, multiple garages, and more.

“There’s a lot of thought into it in here,” Manfre said.

West End Fire

One of the most noticeable aspects of the fire station are the six large garage doors. Manfre said six firetrucks and two utility task vehicles can fit in it, with room to spare.

There are also three large garage doors on the backside of the firetrucks. That allows the trucks to drive into the station and continue forward when leaving, with no backing up. Manfre said many of the accidents in fire service happened when a truck is backing up and someone is behind it.

Each of the six bays has a flexible, yellow hose that can connect to the exhaust pipe of the trucks, and is ventilated to the outside.

“We can actually do our testing inside,” Manfre said. “We test our trucks once a month. Everything comes off, gets ran and gets put back on to make sure everything is in working order. We can do that inside when it’s 3 degrees outside.”

The station also has a new gear washer to wash off carcinogens from a fire, and a new cascade, which will fill the tanks with air that are worn by the firefighters.

“We had all that stuff across the street, but it was failing,” Manfre said. “We were trying to hold off getting a new one until we got the new building.”

On the far wall of the station, lockers for the firefighters’ equipment line the wall.

“At the old station, we just had a hook on the wall,” Manfre said.

The new facility also has a 35,000 gallon water tank in the ground, so the station can fill tanker trucks quickly. The station has to keep 20,000 gallons for its own fire protection, but it leaves 15,000 gallons for fighting fires elsewhere.

“Our tanker holds almost 3,000 gallons; you can’t fill that up with a garden hose,” Manfre said. “We can fill the truck right inside the station, so it saves us a ton of time.”

A door from the garage leads to four offices and a kitchen next to the training room. The training room is filled with tables and chairs, and two televisions. It is only for training, Manfre said.

On the second floor, the fire station has a lounge with a kitchenette, two bathrooms with showers so firefighters can wash off any toxic residue from a fire, a bunk room in case weather situations or emergencies keep them at the station, and a weight room.

LVHN and EOC

The visitors entrance to the building is on the first floor, opposite the garage. That is also the section where LVHN EMS has offices and where the Emergency Operations Center is located.

LVHN has a three-bay garage for ambulances with the same flexible yellow hoses to vent vehicle exhaust to the outside.

The heart of the Emergency Operations Center is a room with 12 work stations and four touch-screen televisions that can function as large computer monitors. That is where emergency coordinators from the local municipalities could work together to coordinate a response to a large emergency.

“It happens more than you think,” Manfre said.

Albright mentioned the room sits on a false floor, designed to allow for cables beneath it that power computers and other equipment. The actual floor is 8 inches below. The idea was the suggestion of Gary Hoffman, an Eldred Township supervisor and director of communications at the Monroe County Control Center, so it can be updated as technology changes or if something stops working.

Manfre said, “There’s a tone of redundancy down there.”

The section also includes offices for emergency coordinators, a conference room, a kitchenette and a storage room.