Ventura County Fire Station 34 has a new home, officially moving into their new location earlier this month, per the Ventura County Fire Departmentโs website.
According to the VCFD website, the new station, located at 2977 Mountclef Blvd., has seven dorms, two offices, a kitchen and dining area, a fitness room, day room, and four restrooms. The previous station, located approximately a half-mile west of the new building, housed three firefighters, an amount VCFD Public Information Officer Andrew Dowd said was pushing it by the end.
Dowd said that the expansion into the new station was necessary because โrisk and agencyโ are higher than they once were.
โFire Station 34 was, I mean, I worked there. It was small. It was small for three people,โ Dowd said. โI think it was 1950s and it was designed to house three people. At that time, the breadth and the scope of what the fire department did is not as large as the breadth and the scope of what it happens to be: an all risk fire agency now.โ
According to Dowd, the station is currently staffed as a single engine crew with three firefighters; however, it can house up to seven.
โSo when new Fire Station 34 was being designed, it was designed to handle more people, more apparatuses, and be more flexible. So we could sleep up to seven people in that facility,โ Dowd said.
The building is designed to house an extra fire engine if additional service is needed to support the community members of Thousand Oaks, according to the VCFD website.
Dowd said there are many factors that go into determining locations for new stations, and that Ventura County Fire has a team whose job it is to analyze call patterns to pinpoint where new stations would be most effective.
โStrategic placement of our fire engines makes a difference,โ Dowd said. โOur goal is to be able to get water on every single fire we can very quickly. So when you have a large area like Thousand Oaks with a large population, we want to make sure that our stations are strategically positioned in the right distance, not only from, from those target areas and target hazards, such as the university, but also positioned appropriately distanced from each other.โ
Dowd said that each fire station within the area plays a different role, and that in relocating it was important to keep Station 34, which houses a paramedic, in appropriate proximity to the other stations. Station 34 houses a paramedic engine, Dowd said, meaning it exclusively dispatches paramedic firefighters to provide advanced life support services.
โThe next nearby station would probably be Station 30 and we have a paramedic ambulance, or rescue ambulance, thatโs out of that station. So we also strategically placed where we put our ALS units to have good coverage,โ Dowd said. โSo that way we kind of cover the map with two paramedic stations with a non-medic station in the middle, so we can provide that AS coverage, that paramedic coverage wouldnโt be necessary.โ
Dowd said the station is keenly aware of the role it plays in the lives of California Lutheran University students and the greater Thousand Oaks community, saying that they arenโt just going to work, but fighting for their homes.
โWe view ourselves as your community fire department. Our firefighters live here. They work here, our kids go to school here, our families live in this community. We have firefighters that, whose children attend Cal Lutheran, and so it is not just a place that we work. It is not just an analytic decision. It is part of what we do to our own home,โ Dowd said.
Dowd said that having a group of thousands of people in one spot, as is the case with Cal Lutheran, paired with the surrounding residentials, made their new home a logical relocation spot for Station 34.
โThe Cal Lutheran community is very important to us. Itโs very important to serve that community,โ Dowd said. โIโd like to think that faculty, staff, everybody that attends and works and lives at Cal Lutheran can take comfort knowing that your fire station is right around the corner.โ
