Safety considerations for your station

September 6, 2021

Keeping firefighters and community members safe is top priority, but did you know these safety efforts begin at the station?

Firefighter cancer is a real problem, and fire and emergency services stations are the collection point for contaminated equipment. In addition to hazards of direct skin contact with the contaminated equipment, there is off-gassing of contaminated equipment into the station environment. 

The challenge in the design of facilities to minimize the risks of cancer is to isolate, capture and remove the carcinogens. These efforts require a change in how business is done that needs to be accepted in the emergency response culture.

One way to address this problem is to decontaminate equipment before bringing them into the station.

In cases where this is not feasible, the concept of “zoning” spaces within the fire station must be used.

• Red — spaces exposed to carcinogens (hot zone).
• Yellow — transition area between contaminated area and clean area (warm zone).
• Green — clean area, such as living, kitchen, dormitory, etc., (cold/clean zone).