This facility received a Training Facilities Bronze Award in Firehouse's 2020 Station Design Awards. Find the full list of winners here.
The challenge for the design-build team was to design and construct a facility that has diverse and comprehensive fire training capabilities to serve the wide-ranging needs of eastern Connecticut.
In Connecticut, there are nine regional fire schools and the Connecticut Fire Academy. The Eastern Connecticut Fire School (ECFS) is the only such facility that’s east of the Connecticut River.
The demographics of the ECFS service area are approximately 72 percent volunteer. The catchment area of the ECFS is approximately one-third of the state in size, serving 49 towns that include 99 municipal fire departments. It also includes fire departments of a U.S. submarine base, the University of Connecticut, a submarine manufacturing plant, Pfizer, and the Mohegan and Mashantucket Tribes. This is exactly one-third of the entire state’s 315 recognized fire service organizations.
The Eastern Connecticut Fire School was constructed from the ground up using the design/build delivery method for the State of Connecticut. Completed in 2019 at a construction cost of $15.3 million, its attractive design and unique features spread out over a 15-acre campus in Willimantic and incorporate: the administration/classroom building (14,100 square feet), which provides classrooms, a lecture hall, a cafeteria and administration office space; the maintenance/apparatus building (11,000 square feet), which features training rooms, equipment repair facilities, locker/shower rooms and drive-through apparatus bays; a three-story concrete and masonry burn building that’s used for live fire training and designed to simulate various hazardous situations; a five-story concrete and masonry training tower that’s utilized for simulating various search-and-rescue exercises; and specialized outdoor pad-mounted fire-training props for vehicle fire and extrication, railroad tanker car and propane tank fires as well as a flash simulator, which allow for multiple training scenarios to occur simultaneously on campus.
Architect/Firm Name: Carlin Construction Company LLC.
