Fire station bunk room requires renovations
Above the garage at the Forest Park Fire Department, there’s an open-air bunk room with several beds lining the walls. But the room where firefighters sleep when they’re on-call hasn’t been updated since the 1970s, when it was built as an addition to the now 120-year-old fire house.
As the village searches for money to update the fire department’s aging infrastructure, the bunk room is first on the list to provide a more-private sleeping area and locker rooms.
At the Feb. 24 village council meeting, commissioners unanimously passed a resolution allowing Forest Park to apply to the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal’s Fire Station Rehabilitation and Construction grant to remodel the bunk room. And at the March 10 village council meeting, commissioners approved a resolution authorizing $7,525 of professional architectural services from Smith Architecture to provide a general project scope and drawings for the renovation.
The anticipated rehabilitation will make the bunk room more private, replacing five-foot-tall dividers that stop feet short of the ceiling with 10 individual bedrooms, likely with a small desk and storage area. Officials also plan to add a locker room area where there is currently no privacy for changing – something that becomes more pronounced for women in an industry dominated by men.
Fire Chief Lindsey Hankus is the only woman on her staff of 24 firefighters and has been since she joined the Forest Park Fire Department in 2005. Though she got her own bedroom when she served as lieutenant – and now doesn’t sleep at the station as fire chief – before that, she had no separation from her male peers.
“I didn’t have privacy. I just slept in all my clothes, and that helped me get down to the rig faster,” Hankus said. “It’s fine, but sleeping in your uniform pants is not necessarily the most comfortable thing.”
Hankus is asking for design input from all the station’s firefighters, as the bunk room renovations aren’t just for potential women firefighters, but for everyone, since it’ll make it easier for staff to sleep through the night.
“Sleep is very important to the firemen, and it already gets interrupted,” Hankus said. “My priority is getting that bunk room situated so that everybody has their private space. It’s the industry standard now.”
Hankus said that she and Kimberlee Smith, owner of Smith Architecture in Oak Park, are also looking into adding communication options in each bunk room.
“So if there was an ambulance-only call, only people that are assigned to the ambulance will get toned for that,” Hankus said. And those with engine duty can sleep through the alarm.
Hankus said she’ll be working with Smith to determine a layout for the locker room. It might be that they construct one new locker room for storage, and when firefighters change, they can use their private bunk space or a bathroom. Or there might be two separate locker rooms.
Regardless, there will likely be 27 lockers – the number of firefighters that the Forest Park Fire Department will have by next May, according to its contract.
The bunk room will also need new electrical, windows, flooring and walls. Hankus said that she and her staff have discussed how the bunk room’s wooden panel walls should come down, in case they’re a host for carcinogens.
“The firemen used to smoke back in the day,” she said.
Financing fire station renovations
The Feb. 24 resolution involving the fire house asks the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal for a $113,250 grant for a bunk room and locker room renovation estimated to cost $123,250. The village is not required to match funds in order to get the grant, which it does not yet know it will get.
“We do want to create a healthy, safe environment, so we’re working towards that in the constraints of our budget,” Hankus said. “But it is a little bit of a challenge.”
If the fire department can find additional money, they also want to address the height of the garage.
“Another challenge we’re having with the firehouse is the height on the old section on the apparatus floor is too low to fit any of the trucks that are currently manufactured,” Hankus said.
The new truck that the fire department is looking to buy is only an inch shorter than the garage opening. Hankus said the truck needs to be replaced in 2028, but there is up to four years of lead time. The fire department also needs a new engine in 2027.
Also on the first floor of the fire station, some of the walls have a cedar finish. Hankus said the fire house didn’t used to have a system to remove exhaust, so a lot of it was absorbed into the porous wood. But remediation there isn’t as much of a focus right now as the bunk room is.
“We do live in this upstairs space, where we spend the most of our time, so this is the targeted area,” Hankus said, “knowing that downstairs is also a priority.”
As the Forest Park Fire Department works toward being fully staffed next year, Hankus said she doesn’t think the potential, but much-needed, renovations to the fire station will affect recruitment all that much.
“It doesn’t necessarily get advertised what the conditions are up here or what the firehouse looks like,” Hankus said.
She adds that the station has invited recruits to see the firehouse’s upstairs. But rather than the amenities, it’s usually the camaraderie among staff that pulls them in.
“What we have going for us is we have a great group of guys.”
