Construction began a month late on the new fire station in Covington, but Fire District 37 officials say it’s a month ahead of schedule now.

Capt. Phil Herrera, a longtime firefighter with the department, is overseeing the construction of Station 78. It’s the eighth station in the district.

“The general contractor will be done Nov. 1,” Herrera said. Once the interior is outfitted, the new firehouse is scheduled to open next February.

Station 78, located at Southeast 256th Street and 180th Avenue Southeast, will bring faster response time to parts of Covington and the Maple Valley area that are rapidly growing and underserved, officials said. They also said it will also allow other fire stations to better cover their areas, as well as provide a command center space for natural disasters and training space for firefighters.

Commercial Structures, the Burien-based general contractor, “has been pretty good as far as paying attention to detail and being aggressive about keeping (the project) on schedule,” Herrera said. “We’ve been fortunate to have weather conducive to construction. At this point we’re well within budget. There haven’t really been any big surprises.”

Paying for the station, which had a price tag of about $241 per square foot – or more than $5 million – when the contract was awarded last December, will also be easier thanks to voters approving a levy lid lift last summer.

Initially, the idea was to have the station open at the beginning of this year, but district officials decided to delay the work based on several factors. That ended up saving district taxpayers nearly $1 million on the project, said Capt. Larry Rabel, community liaison for District 37 and the Kent Fire Department.

When the first call for bids for the project went out, “the construction industry was busy,” Rabel said. “So that delay allowed us to find a better contractor and subcontractors that did quality work. And $300,000 was saved by having (Herrera) working on this project, due to his experience.”

Rabel said district officials looked at hiring a consultant to serve as project manager, but they instead leaned on Herrera’s experience as a 20-year firefighter, as well as his previous work overseeing construction on Station 77.

“And the ‘troops’ appreciate it because the last station he oversaw” was described by firefighters “as the most functional,” Rabel said.

He said Station 78 “is totally set up for response time.” Once it’s open, the idea is to try and get firefighters to a scene in seven minutes or less from the time 9-1-1 is called – something firefighters can’t do right now.

Time is important. First, officials said, the quicker firefighters respond, the quicker the fire can be put out before it hits flashover – the point when everything in the room gets so hot it ignites and explodes. And when responding to medical aid calls, the more seconds shaved off the time it takes to get to someone in distress, the higher the likelihood of survival.

The station, which is 17,385 square feet, will also be a training facility, so its personnel can stay close while completing mandatory training throughout the year.

“It’s common for fire departments to have a hose-drying tower,” Herrera said. “We put in functionality so we can do tower training here. We have surfaces where we can put ladders in the windows and the balconies. The roof is actually a training platform for rope rescue.”

Rabel said taxpayers are getting a lot of bang for their buck out of the extra training functions.

There will be five people working at Station 78 at all times. There are six dorm rooms that can accomodate two firefighters each. Bathrooms are across the hall from the dorm rooms and have been built with pass-through access so that if a call comes in while firefighters are in the rooms or even the bathroom, they can run straight through to the apparatus bay.

“Of all our stations – this will be our eighth – this one will have the shortest distance from any place in the station” to the fire truck, Herrera said, adding the building is designed so that the staff of three firefighters and two Medic One emergency medical technicians will be less than 20 seconds away no matter where they are in the building.

Even the bay doors facing 256th Street have been set up for efficiency, opening in six or seven seconds compared to 18 to 30 seconds at other stations, Herrera said.

Looking at coverage standards and considering the development planned for downtown Covington, district officials decided station 78 would have to serve the community as it grows during the next 30 years.

“The whole theme of this station is long-term,” Rabel said. “As Covington grows, this will be able to match the growth.”

Staff writer Kris Hill can be reached at (425) 432-1209 (extension 5054) and khill@reporternewspapers.com