Fire Facilities and Emergency Response Levy Program

In November of 2003, 69% of people voting in Seattle approved the Fire Facilities and Emergency Response Levy. Over a nine-year period this program, which started in 2004, will use levy proceeds and other funding to:

• upgrade, renovate, or replace 32 neighborhood fire stations;
• construct a new training facility and a new Fire Alarm Center;
• establish emergency preparedness facilities and disaster response equipment that includes a modern, seismically safe Emergency Operations Center, emergency community supplies, emergency shelter power generators, and emergency water supply capacity for fire fighting in the event the City's fire hydrants are disabled;
• and build a new large fire boat, a new small fire boat, and renovate the Chief Seattle fireboat.

Completed in February 2011, the new Fire Station 38 in the Hawthorne Hills neighborhood provides adequate space for modern firefighting equipment and operations. Firefighters had outgrown the historic station located seven blocks away, built in 1930.