The South Bend Fire Department held a public ceremony to recognize their newly opened fire station.
Fire Station 9 is located four blocks from the Memorial Park boat launch. Officials say this will help cut the response time for water emergencies by about six minutes.
The station will also house the only ambulance for the east side of the City.
Steve Cox is the Fire Chief of the South Bend Fire Department. He said the new station was built in a way that keeps cancerous toxins out of the living quarters.
“There are always going to be risks with firefighting whether we like it or not, but if we can try and minimize those risks at the outset just by building a building in an intelligent way, that’s really what we wanted to do and that was the focus of the way we built the building,” Cox said.
The building also has more individual unisex bathrooms and a space dedicated to breast pumping for firefighters who are also mothers.
Chief Cox says it took about 20 years of planning to decide on the best design and location of the building.