On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the southeastern Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi coastlines. Damage to all of the communities in these areas has been well documented. One of the areas hardest hit was St. Bernard Parish, La., a suburban community of New Orleans. St. Bernard Parish had seven of its 10 fire stations completely destroyed and three severely damaged by flood waters.

Faced with the challenges of rebuilding the entire infrastructure of a department, St. Bernard Parish hired L7 Architects and Stuart Consulting Group in October 2006 to begin the daunting design process for the fire department.

But it has been an uphill battle for the department. Over the past three years, the fire department has operated out of insufficient facilities provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including trailers to house the firefighters and make-shift tent structures for the fire apparatus. While the fire department faced the logistical challenges of serving the public out of these inadequate facilities, the parish/department leadership and hired architects faced other obstacles — primarily FEMA.

Complete Overhaul

The damage assessment following Hurricane Katrina showed that 90% of all the structures in the parish either were destroyed completely or damaged heavily, including all 10 parish fire stations. Of these 10, two stations were completely swept off the existing slab, seven received an average flood water height above the apparatus (12 feet), and only three were declared salvageable. The three that were renovated probably should have been torn down as well, but all parties agreed that remediation would be faster than reconstruction and the need was immediate. Until the initial phase of remediating the three damaged fire stations was completed, the entire department worked out of heavily damaged apparatus bays and temporary trailers set up by the federal government.

The particulars of how Chief Thomas Stone was able to manage the department's dwindling human resources and negotiate the extreme time constraints prescribed by FEMA is outside the scope of this article. The design process for a fire station under normal conditions is not a simple task, and the process to design and build 10 of them under the constant supervision of FEMA was extremely challenging.

Tasked with the design and document production for the construction of each station, the design team was very much aware of the need to renovate and reconstruct the stations on a much shorter time frame than normal. Even working under these extreme time constraints, we were able to program, justify, design and produce construction documents for 10 fire stations in less than one year.

In a major disaster, FEMA considers any public building that is more than 50% damaged eligible for reconstruction rather than repair. Each of these candidates is put through a rigorous process of challenges, including estimates and structural assessments to meet the 50% rule. Once this is accomplished, then a project may move forward based on the initial FEMA project worksheet. From our experience with FEMA, a building will not meet the 50% rule unless it is clearly beyond repair. Even if a building only has two columns left, as was the case in Stations 11 and 12, we still had to follow the rules of determination and complete FEMA's project worksheet.

L7 Architects began with the task of creating the repair documents first. This became the priority since we felt that it was the best chance to get the department back into a station as quickly as possible. Only after the first three stations were under re-construction did we begin the process of designing the seven new stations. The other seven stations all needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. According to FEMA guidelines, each station had to occupy the same space as the previously damaged station. FEMA also notified us that none of those spaces could be any larger than the original station. This was the primary requirement if the department was to be reimbursed for 100% of the rebuilding costs. If FEMA determined that we were trying to improve the station in any way outside of codes and standards, then the funding reimbursement dropped to 75% of the initial bid cost.

FEMA Constraints

Fire Station 2 was the first station we began working on immediately after renovating the salvageable stations. It became clear to all that the FEMA constraints were going to make the “rebuilt” stations unusable.

For each station, we had to:

• Conduct a base FEMA evaluation and site visit.

• Document the extent of the damage and produce a project worksheet. These worksheets established what FEMA believed to be the scope of damage and an estimated cost for the repair or replacement of the fire stations as they existed at the time of the storm. Further complicating matters and adding delays in this process was the constant replacement of FEMA project officers who were rotated out every four to six months. When one project officer left and another entered, the design process started over, as information was not transferred between project officers. Everything that was negotiated and decided with one group had to be renegotiated with a new team of project officers, and it was the responsibility of the department's leadership and L7 Architects to educate them as fast as possible.

• Determine whether the station was more or less than 50% damaged. This stage was done initially and then reviewed by the architects and engineers of record for verification.

• Produce a building program for the new station with careful consideration of the square footage. FEMA rejected all of the new programs.

• Creation of a justification document that covered every square foot of the existing station. Justifications were framed in the context of building codes and NFPA standards. In general, FEMA accepted the justifications defined by building codes yet initially rejected design elements defined by NFPA standards. For example, at one point all of the automatic overhead doors were determined to be ineligible for reimbursement. Fortunately, L7 was able to locate joint documents between the U.S. Fire Administration and FEMA that facilitated the resolution of some of the issues questioned by local FEMA officials. But these solutions did not apply to all stations and needed to be proved for each and every fire station in the justification document. Very often we were unable to completely convince FEMA that spaces not found in 1950s-60s stations were needed in 21st-century stations, such as decontamination spaces or turnout gear storage rooms. Every step of the way, the St. Bernard Fire Department was forced to account for each station's existing spaces and use only that information for the new building program.

• Design the station to fulfill the stated justified program.

• Produce construction documents based upon the final program and justification document.

• Perform construction administration with the added burden of justifying any issue that arises during construction that resulted in a change order. A small number of unknown issues always arise during the course of normal construction. No set of contract documents is perfect and there is always is a series of coordination issues that need to be addressed. Very often a depressed high-priced market can cause contractors to raise the rate of overhead and profit as much as possible in their bids in order to recover costs of potential change orders. This can make for an interesting relationship between owner, contractor, architect and FEMA.

Controversial Decisions

Our first concern with designing all of the stations was with the apparatus bays and the need for the occupants to reach those bays quickly. After carefully measuring the carcass of Station 2, we determined that the new apparatuses would not fit in the bays. Undeterred by this determination, FEMA declared that the department would have to use the existing dimensions and renovate the new station's overhead door openings by adding an enclosure to accommodate the larger apparatus, or accept an "improved" label on the station. We immediately requested a site visit.

During the site visit, Engine 2 drove into the existing bay to demonstrate that FEMA's solution was in no way acceptable. Not only did the rear bumper jut out from the envelope of the building, but a firefighter could not move in front of the apparatus to reach the other side of the bay. Our defense then became, "Who is liable for putting the occupants of the station, and therefore the entire parish population in harm's way during an emergency event," in all of our subsequent justifications. In heated meetings between FEMA and L7 over these square-footage issues, L7 suggested that another design team be considered because we could not proceed in a professional manner with the proposed restrictions on the stations. It became quite detrimental that fire stations across the country could not be used as precedents or industry standards, and we made a professional and moral decision not to place firefighters in harm's way within their own facility.

Many controversial decisions were made during the design of Station 2. The entire station was rotated 35° on the corner site to allow for better drive-through access; the apparatus bays were re-designed to allow for proper access to the apparatus as well as maintain a 36-inch-wide aisle for exiting egress; the station was designed to accommodate male and female firefighters; sleeping spaces were designed to meet the minimum space requirements as stated by NFPA 1500; and the station's living quarters were set on top of the bays, introducing a second level. The last design detail was executed because of site size restrictions stemming from the larger bays and the reality that the authorities cannot say definitively that the levees will not fail again. The intriguing part about the second story is that FEMA initially accepted the idea as part of a mitigation statement and we were able to raise all of the sleeping and living spaces. But L7 had to explain why we needed to add the square footage for the stair and fire pole to access that second floor.

After many design road blocks were cleared, L7 was able to focus on solving the fire department's issues and placing stations on the existing sites. We looked at the task not as a process constrained to each station, but as the redesign of the department's identity. Using similar forms and consistent materials, we were able to set the stations within the context of the suburban/rural parish as primary objects that are seen by the community as symbols of protection and recovery. Now three years later, through the piles of FEMA red tape, the first replacement fire station is ready for occupancy. Four of the other six fire stations under construction will be completed by the end of the year.

Jay Chase is the principal architect at L7 Architects. Nick Marshall is the design director of the firm's New Orleans Studio.