In the bunkhouse, where the firefighters sleep, firefighters complain about holes in the wall large enough for someone to look into the room from outside the building. The central air conditioning unit doesn’t work, the roof leaks and there is no separate women’s locker room and bathroom.

"Eventually it’s got to get better," says Vaughan, a 19-year veteran of the D.C. Fire Department, about the living conditions in the firehouse. "At least I hope so."

This fall, Engine 32 and Engine 17 in Brookland will be the first firehouses to be totally rehabilitated in 13 years. Bunkhouses, living areas, dining areas and kitchens, shower rooms, locker rooms and offices will be stripped and rebuilt. Changes are afoot not only at Engine 32 but throughout the entire fire department due to a new focus in spending by the D.C. government.

According to Capt. Clarence L. Wooten, planning officer at the Administrative Division of the fire department, the current fiscal year’s budget includes only $663,000 for capital improvements to firehouses and other structures. Next year’s proposed budget, however, allows for $2.4 million to be spent fixing firehouses.

Budget cuts throughout most of this decade have led to crisis situations in the fire department. Maintenance and routine replacement of fire trucks and emergency vehicles has been hampered as well as the maintenance of the firehouses. According to Battalion Chief Alvin Carter, a department spokesman, when the D.C. control board started looking into the department’s budgetary needs, the initial priority was placed on replacing and repairing response vehicles. Now that the department has been updating and replacing its emergency vehicles, Carter said attention is being focused on the conditions of the firehouses, and he feels the department has "begun to turn the corner" on firehouse maintenance.

Many of the needed improvements will affect the firefighter at the stations on a very basic level. At Engine 18 on Capitol Hill, the roof is so leaky that in several places the firefighters have constructed chutes out of plastic sheeting to direct the water out of windows and away from traffic areas. Most dramatically, a chute hangs at the top of the station’s only stairwell in an attempt to keep the water from a years-old leak from turning the concrete and steel steps into a health hazard.

Capt. Larry A. Settle said the roof has leaked there since he was assigned to the station nearly seven years ago. "I pulled it all down myself so it wouldn’t fall on anyone," said Settle, indicating a gaping hole in the ceiling five feet in diameter that reveals steel girders and water-stained insulation. And while the station put a brand new engine into service on May 14, the roof on the firehouse has never been replaced.

But now that the department has received a new allocation of $500,000 for roof repairs alone, Engine 18 will be getting its roof repaired, as will a dozen other firehouses. Firehouses will be getting new foam and polymer roofs like the one just completed at Engine 5 in Georgetown. They will replace the old tar and gravel roofs and come with a 10-year warranty, with an option to extend the warranty for an additional 10 years, Wooten said.

But the firehouse roofs are only a small part of the job that faces Wooten. When temperatures reached the 90s the second week of May, Wooten’s office was inundated with calls from firehouses whose air conditioning didn’t work properly. Wooten estimated that 60 to 65 percent of the stations’ air conditioners needed work.

On a recent day, Wooden was pointing out problems with the air conditioning systems at various firehouses with a private contractor preparing a bid for a maintenance contract. According to Wooden, air conditioning maintenance is currently contracted to the General Services Administration (GSA), which Wooden partly blames for the problems with the air conditioning systems in the firehouses.

"I have a hard time getting GSA to perform," said Wooden, noting that six or seven firehouses have no central air conditioning at all and rely solely on fans and small window units. At Engine 18, window units were installed as a stopgap measure ten years ago when the central air failed, but have remained in place since because the central air has never been fixed.

The air conditioning contract held by GSA expires in July and Wooten is looking to a private company to take over that contract.

Other problems that Wooten has been working on include the only working boiler at the department’s Fleet Maintenance Division, which is currently being repaired by using parts from the inoperable boiler sitting next to it. Both boilers were built in the 1930s, and Wooten says that during the winter, it needs daily attention to keep it running. The "apron," the stretch of concrete from the firehouse door to the street, at Engine 15 in Anacostia is so cracked and warped that the trucks will bottom out if they pull out of the station too fast. As the person in charge of getting the major work at the firehouses done, Wooten spends his day listening to a litany of such complaints wherever he goes.

"I can’t fix everything, even if I had the money," Wooten said. "I’d love to be able to snap my fingers and have everything fixed." Wooten, a jovial man with a walrus mustache and a direct, frank manner of speaking, notes that right now his immediate priorities are heating, air conditioning, plumbing and sewage systems, with cosmetic improvements last on his list.

"It got down to the point where we were doing crisis management," said Wooten. "It’s going to take three to five years to fix the damage we have done."

Wooten and other firefighters acknowledged that the fire department is unique among other city agencies in that the firefighters themselves are qualified and willing to do a lot of the maintenance work themselves. Wooten prides himself on the fact that all ranks of firefighters pitch in to help out, from firefighters replacing the lights in the garage of Engine 18 to a battalion chief at Engine 15 painting his own office.

"We spend one-fourth of our lives here living together, eating together, sleeping together. It’s our home," said Settle. "We’ll paint the place, just give us the paint."

Wooten has been a firefighter in the District for 25 years. The unique nature of the job, which gives firefighters three days off for every 24-hour shift they work, allowed Wooten to keep a parallel career as a general contractor and businessman. He says when he accepted the job at fire department headquarters last December, it was a way of giving something back and improving the department. "I took a serious pay cut to take this job," said Wooten.

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator