The Callaway County Ambulance District will soon have a new home.
"We, late last year, purchased (a building) in Tanglewood," Director Charles Anderson told Fulton City Council members at the June meeting. "We're in the process of designing an ambulance facility to replace the one on Hickman Avenue."
Storm over shelter
One of the barriers in the way is International Building Code requirements for a storm shelter in this type of "essential service" building. Even first responders need a place to shelter during a dangerous weather event.
"It's basically a tornado shelter," said Rick Cool, of Williams, Spurgeon, Kuhl and Freshnock Architects.
Those requirements, he said, are much more stringent than the city's building codes and compliance would put a large financial burden on the ambulance district.
"Accommodating this 'upgrade' will require dedicated structural design calculations, notes and details - essentially a structure within the structure of the building, with load requirements three to four times that of the rest of the building," project architect Amy Schaefer said in a letter to the city. "It will require additional structural design fees, extensive coordination between mechanical and structural design, peer review, special inspections and additional fees for (oversight) during construction."
She estimated that constructing a compliant storm shelter would add $350,000 to the project cost.
Cool suggested instead, the council could grant an exemption to the 2015 International Building Code allowing the ambulance district to construct a hardened room instead of a ICC-500 shelter.
"Our proposal is to provide a structure that is essentially a concrete box within the building that is being expanded," he said.
The space would still be large large enough to accommodate 119 occupants and would have protected openings, emergency power, ventilation and toilet rooms. Cool said it would be able to support the weight of the whole building if it collapsed.
"In our experience, other municipalities have allowed exemption given provisions for a similar 'hardened room' shelter," Schaefer said.
Dennis Houchins, Fulton's planning and protective services director, said his own research has shown the same.
Bill Johnson, Fulton's director of administration, pointed out that when the city adopted the 2015 IBC in 2017, it introduced a few exemptions right from the start. Granting an exemption on this matter would require introducing an ordinance to revert that specific part of the code back to the 2006 IBC, which did not require buildings such as this, fire departments and schools to have storm shelters.
City councilors voted to draft an ordinance to eliminate that portion of the 2015 IBC. The motion passed with two nays, and the ordinance will likely appear on the agenda of a future meeting.