A recently floated plan to replace aging facilities at Pier 22 1/2 on the Embarcadero would put a crucial fire station on a barge or buoyant pier, a floating facility to support three fire boats, one fire engine, and 12 firefighters, 24/7. The Chronicle's architecture writer John King had the story, a novel design solution to the problem of building a structure to serve the fire department for the next 75-years on the bay side of the Embarcadero seawall.
That structure is due to be strengthened in anticipation of a major earthquake and raised in anticipation of sea level rise, and as the city requires all major new infrastructure projects to account for such a change, the fire station, were it built on land or even on a pier anchored to the seafloor, would need to be 4 feet above the existing Embarcadero. Doing so "would present a curious presence on the Embarcadero, to have this structure literally up in the air,” Public Works architect and program manager Charles Higueras told King.
But the floating pier — technically a barge of steel — would face no such problem. A proposal approved by port and fire commissions calls for the structure to be 80 feet wide, 180 feet long, and 32-feet high.
Especially in the event of earthquakes, fire boats have historically been pivotal: As Atlas Obscura recalls, the Phoenix, one such boat, was instrumental in putting out fires in the Marina District after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, extinguishing flames at Beach and Divisadero by pumping water from the St. Francis Yacht Harbor through a portable water system.
So far, Public Works has fielded responses from five design teams who are submitting their proposals in February. But in addition to quakes and rising seas, the floating facility will have to withstand reviews from state and federal agencies that will consider everything from its impact on the Bay and public waterfront access to the adequacy of its living quarters for firefighters.
“This seems like the most flexible approach that we can take to prepare for sea level rise as it manifests itself, not as we think it might be in 50 or 75 years,” Gabriella Judd Cirelli, project manager at the Public Works department, told King.
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