Arlington officials Saturday will officially inaugurate the county’s long-awaited new fire station, the first in the Washington area with gender-neutral sleeping areas to accommodate a growing number of female firefighters.
Fire Station No. 5, which serves the Pentagon City area and the Pentagon, features 12 individual suites, each with a single bed, a bathroom and lockers, and three additional suites that sleep two people each.
“Each room is like a small hotel room, so it doesn’t matter if we have a female firefighter here today and a male firefighter here tomorrow,” Assistant Fire Chief John White said.
Arlington was the first fire department in the nation to hire a professional female firefighter, in 1974.
Almost 10 percent of Arlington’s 312 firefighters are women, White said, and the county occasionally sees all-women firetrucks.
Arlington’s fire stations were renovated in the 1990s to include individual sleeping quarters for firefighters, who work 24-hour shifts, but the rooms did not include individual bathrooms.
Instead, most fire stations have separate male and female locker rooms, with the female locker rooms being significantly smaller.
“We’ve gradually changed the culture over time to be more gender-neutral,” White said, noting all new fire stations in the county will be built with the individual suites.
Fire Station No. 3 in the Cherrydale area of Arlington is the only other station slated for reconstruction.
Fire Station No. 5 is the county’s busiest, responding to 6,867 calls last year.
The $7 million, bond-financed station was originally scheduled to open in 2005, but was delayed by construction problems.
The new facility is the only one in the county with a decontamination suite where firefighters and victims who have been exposed to dangerous chemicals can change and shower without contaminating their surroundings.
The station also features a green vegetation roof, post-consumer recycled building materials, and is the fourth in Arlington to have a “Safe Haven” lobby, where people in physical danger can enter, lock the door and press a panic button to call for help.
