<i>One of the Williston Fire Rescue trucks in the tents gets unloaded after firefighters responded to a call.</i>
Inside a run-down trailer one block west of the Williston Fire Rescue, two firefighters sit in a dank, dark room in fold-up chairs eating McDonald’s while debating rumors of a sixth season of “Breaking Bad.” It was a typical 24-hour shift, except Mother Nature has forced the station out of its workplace.
“Some of the things in our station were starting to lean,” said Lake Raymond, deputy fire chief. “You could look at the station, and it wasn’t exactly straight.”
Williston’s fire and police departments abandoned their buildings at 5 SW First Ave. about three weeks ago because unstable ground conditions were causing buildings to sink.
Currently, the departments are working in trailers until the buildings’ foundations are repaired.
The city’s insurance company, Florida League of Cities, Inc., is covering the cost of the entire project.
After investigating the sinking for six months, the company hired Ram Jack, a national company with a location in High Springs, to begin drilling piles into the ground where the fire trucks were once parked.
Ram Jack crew supervisor Cory Scott, 25, said the station was built on bad soil, and the heavy fire trucks sped up the erosion of a poor foundation.
Scott, who has been working for the company for three years, said it’s not a sinkhole but settling clay that caused the building to start sinking.
“[People] see us and they automatically think sinkhole, but 90 percent of the time it’s not," Scott said.
He said that clay is also a problem for residential houses because it’s unstable.
When it dries out it shrinks up, and when it gets wet it expands.
<i>Large tents cover the Williston Fire Rescue trucks in the vacant field near the station.</i>
“They built it on top of this trash - burnt wood,” Scott said. “We pulled all kinds of stuff out of the ground.”
He said with sinkhole situations the company drills the same steel piles into the ground but will also pump grout in the space between the piles.
The company is drilling 404 steel piles 10 feet long into the ground, varying 20 to 80 feet deep under the station, Scott said. Though Ram Jack was estimated to be drilling for about one-and-a-half to two months, their part in the repair is almost over, he said.
After drilling and concrete slab replacement, the building’s interior, including the walls and carpet, will be renovated due to leakage from rain, said Raymond, who has been working at the Williston station for nine years.
The entire project is planned to be completed by mid-April.
Raymond said it took one day to temporarily relocate the fire department.
The station rented three campers, one and a half tents for the fire trucks, and a fence to surround the vacant field.
“It’s just like moving a house, except with a lot bigger toys,” Raymond said.
The fire department has not received any big calls since the move into the campers. A ‘big call’ refers to an emergency that requires multiple fire trucks.
The departments considered moving eight minutes from the station to Williston Municipal Airport, but decided it would hinder the department’s ability to respond to emergencies.
“It was going to be a longer response for the citizens and the city, which are our main concern” Raymond said.
The fire department’s 35 employees all work part time. During each shift, two firefighters are paid hourly and three to four volunteers are compensated for each call.
“The biggest thing is coming together as a group, you know, because most [of] our guys work somewhere else, so we don’t have the same group of guys Monday through Friday,” said Raymond, who works full time in Citrus County.
Though most of the firefighters live outside Williston, Raymond said the fire station has received support from the city of about 10,000 residents.
“We are so entrenched in this community,” Raymond said. “We know so many people that they might bring us food, they might say ‘hey, you guys need any help?’”
For Williston Police Department detective sergeant James Bond, the drilling can’t end soon enough.
Bond said the communications department has had trouble answering calls in the building because of noise from the drilling.
Typically, all 911 calls are received in the Levy County office, but if the call relates to Williston it is transferred to the station’s landline.
<i>Williston Fire Rescue fire truck slots are now being prepared for stage one of sinkhole repair.</i>
As of Oct. 21, the police department did not have any phone lines connected to the camper parked in the station’s parking lot.
“They transfer the calls right to our cell phones now,” Bond said.
Bond works alongside over 20 officers, volunteers and administrative clerks in two adjoining trailers set up in the station’s parking lot.
He said the biggest issue working in the trailers is conducting interviews for investigations.
“When you’re doing interviews like we do, you have to have a secure environment,” Bond said. “You lose that here.”
Bond has worked in construction for 35 years and continues to work part time on his days off. He said his main concern with the station’s sinking foundation is the city well 100 feet from the building.
“Is that an issue? Could it be related? Who knows?” Bond said. “They didn’t seem to think it was.”
Bond said the departments could see the sinking of the building because the window frames began to buckle.
“We noticed the metal was buckling outside of the building, and it was actually protruding past the window frames,” Bond said. “You could see it from the outside pretty plain.”
He said once the frames began to shift, water poured into the building when it rained.
“That got our attention real quick,” he said.
“It’s going to be expensive,” Bond said. “Looking at what I’m seeing here, being that I’m familiar with construction, I would have to say $500,000-600,000. Maybe more.”
Though the insurance is covering the entire project, some problems may have not yet been discovered, he said.
“They can only tell certain things until they start drilling and getting into the meat and potatoes of the job, so God knows you could run into something,” Bond said.
<i>Two Ram Jack workers finish their days' work preparing to drill the piles under the station.</i>