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The Carlsbad Fire Department will begin setting up its new temporary fire station later this year on the site of the now-demolished Encina Power Station. Photo by Steve Puterski
CarlsbadCitiesNewsRegion

Temporary Carlsbad fire station to open by January 2023

CARLSBAD — By the end of the year, the city’s next fire station will likely be operational.

Fire Station 7 will be a temporary station for the next several years after the city approved a six-year, $194,052 lease with NRG Inc. to house the station along Carlsbad Boulevard near Cannon Road.

According to Assistant Fire Chief Nick Ordille, the department must wait until the completion of Fire Station 2 on El Camino Real and Arenal Road before the temporary Fire Station 7 can open due to interim structures and ongoing operations at Dove Library.

Once the construction of Fire Station 2 is complete, the city will move the provisional structures to the now-demolished Encina Power Station site for temporary Fire Station 7, which is expected to be online by January 2023.

“Our lifeguard headquarters will be there, and we’ll have a fire truck and an ambulance,” Ordille said.

The stand-in Fire Station 7 will include two portable buildings for office space (1,782 square feet) and sleeping quarters (1,404 square feet) for up to seven personnel. In addition, a temporary 3,200-square-foot structure will house an ambulance, lifeguard rescue watercraft and other fire department equipment.

The short-term station will be situated about 260 feet east of the road, inside the fenced NRG property, with access through an existing driveway on Carlsbad Boulevard. A building currently sits on the site but will be demolished in the coming weeks, according to an NRG source.

According to Ordille, the fire station is needed to address the city’s highest call volumes along the coastal corridor, accounting for more than half of all calls to the department.

The City of Carlsbad is moving forward with constructing a temporary fire station on Carlsbad Boulevard near the site of the demolished Encina Power Station. Fire crews will have north and south access along the roadway to help address response times. Photo by Steve Puterski
The City of Carlsbad is moving forward with constructing a temporary fire station on Carlsbad Boulevard near the site of the demolished Encina Power Station. Fire crews will have north-south access along the roadway to help address slower response times. Photo by Steve Puterski

Response times have dropped due to the increased call volume, and if there are simultaneous calls, Fire Station 1, located across from the Cole Library, and Fire Station 4, at the intersection of Poinsettia Lane and Batiquitos Lagoon, struggle to meet those needs.

Adding the new station house allows fire crews to react quickly to incoming calls and address multiple calls.

“If you have multiple calls in the same jurisdiction, you have to call in additional resources from further away,” Ordille said. “Putting a station between those will help alleviate some of the longer drive times during those simultaneous incidents and also take the calls in its immediate area that normally station 1 or 4 would have to go to. It should improve that coastal corridor response times.”

The temporary firehouse will remain in place until the city builds a permanent Fire Station 7 west of Interstate 5 along Cannon Road. The city has identified potential locations at the NRG site and San Diego Gas & Electric’s operations center property.

The Carlsbad Fire Department has already taken several steps since the fiscal year began on July 1, 2021, to meet the council’s goal of building permanent firehouse. The department received approval to purchase two new ambulances to put into service on Jan. 6, bringing the total number of city ambulances to five.

The department also hired nine new paramedic firefighters, three new full-time emergency medical technicians and some additional part-time EMTs, who came on board in October 2021.