Emergency Services Where You Need Them

Central Valley Fire District (CVFD) provides all risk fire, rescue, and emergency medical services for 36,000 citizens residing in a two-hundred-square-mile area near Belgrade that includes Montana’s largest and busiest airport—Bozeman-Yellowstone International Airport.

Station 1, which was previously located in downtown Belgrade but is now near the airport, improves access and firefighter response times. It was a 63-year-old building erected by volunteers. The 1956 structure was not only cramped, dangerous and obsolete, but was showing signs of serious external and internal deterioration. The building’s façade had cracks at the bottom of the foundation and up the masonry walls on the outside of the building. Considering the construction era and construction type (unreinforced masonry) the facility was considered extremely susceptible to a seismic event, not an acceptable situation for an essential facility serving such a large contingency.

The Central Valley Fire Station project that has a complex structural design that uses materials from local sources that were built by local tradespeople to create a seismically sound facility. It includes a first-in-the-country decontamination station that protects firefighters from toxic, carcinogenic substances found on clothing and equipment.