Design and Construction of POLB Fireboat Station 20: A State-of-the-Art Facility for Firefighting, Life Safety, and Emergency Response

As one of the busiest and most diverse ports in the United States, the Port of Long Beach (POLB) faces a wide range of potential hazards. To enhance port safety and ensure business continuity, POLB has constructed the new Fireboat Station 20 at Berth D50. This state-of-the-art facility includes a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold-certified, two-story Fire Station Building and a 75-ft-tall Boat Bay to harbor the new fireboat. This paper describes the multifaceted challenges the design team had to resolve, including seismic resilience, sea level rise, underground obstructions, existing quay wall repairs, sustainability, and low-impact development. It addresses the challenges of selecting and designing key components, such as operational planning for the Station Building, foundation selection and installation, Boat Bay wharf and roof enclosure seismic design, quay wall underwater repairs, floating dock design and construction, and the implementation of LEED and low-impact design initiatives. Additionally, it explains the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling to evaluate the effectiveness of natural ventilation in the Boat Bay for fireboat exhaust.