Fire Station Closes Pending Costly Repairs

CRENSHAW —  The Los Angeles Fire Department is scrambling to identify ways to get up to $1 million needed to repair a Crenshaw fire station that was recently closed because of a sinking floor.

The floor in Station 94, located near Coliseum Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, has dropped four inches in the last six years, forcing the department to close the station Thursday and relocate its 39 firefighters to two nearby facilities.

Battalion Chief Daryl Arbuthnott said the floor is sinking because the station was built 40 years ago on wetlands and the builders failed to adequately support the floor. In addition, he said the fire engines and trucks that are parked on the station floor are bigger and heavier than the equipment for which the station was designed.

He said the staff and equipment have been moved to a Crenshaw station in the 3000 block of 7th Street and a Mid-City station in the 5000 block of Washington Boulevard. Both are two miles away from the closed station.

County firefighters in the nearby unincorporated area of Baldwin Hills, about three miles from the closed station, have agreed to help provide fire services for the Crenshaw area until the station is repaired.

Arbuthnott said soil tests and other work will be performed in the next few days to determine how to shore up the station floor. But Arbuthnott said it is still unclear how the department will pay for the repairs.

“Right now, everything comes down to money,” he said.