FLORENCE, Ky. — Nearly four years and $10 million later, a brand new fire station is open and ready to serve a community seeing an exponential need for emergency services amid a population boom.
Fire Station 34 is less than a mile south of the Florence Government Center. The state-of-the-art, 22,000-square-foot facility is also feet away from I-71/75.
"We really feel like we can collaborate with all of our departments being in very close proximity," Florence Mayor Julie Metzger Aubuchon said. "There was a lot of heat maps and response times and looking at the corridors ... and this site, because of the response times that we can serve through the interstate, it was just really strategically located and then a benefit was that it was a blighted property that we've been able to clean up and make great for public use."
Aubuchon told WCPO the city anticipated a need for a new station in 2021 when more businesses moved in and more apartment buildings and housing developments broke ground. Almost 2,000 businesses have already or are in the process of locating in the area.
Watch here to see how Fire Station 34 aims to be a proactive solution to public safety in Florence:
Most recent census data shows Florence's population hovering over 32,000, but that doesn't account for the number of non-residents moving through the city on any given day.
"Our daytime population is huge," said Matt Pleiman, battalion chief of training for Florence Fire/EMS. "Our daytime population actually probably triples, even quadruples the amount of residential population we have. So not only are we busy at night when people are having their chest pain or getting involved in accidents after hours — it's daytime also, which is not always the case across the country."
The department, like any, tracks population trends and can typically anticipate its number of annual emergency runs, Pleiman said. That wasn't the case last year, when numbers increased at an unprecedented rate.
Florence Fire/EMS recorded close to 11,200 calls for service in 2024. The annual average had previously been between 8,500 and 9,000.
That increased pace continued into 2025. Fire Chief Rodney Wren said between January and March, the department hit over 1,000 calls each month. That number has slowed down since, but Wren still expects end-of-year numbers to tally up similarly to those seen last year.
"Big numbers for a small department," Wren said.
Wren gave us an early tour of Fire Station 34 ahead of its ribbon-cutting. The facility boasts a full fleet, which includes an ambulance, ladder truck and a brand new $800,000 fire engine, which arrived a few months ahead of the station's opening.
Most of the department's calls are for EMS services, Wren said, so there is still space for two additional ambulances in the station should the need for more paramedics arise.
"Hopefully, planning for the future with this station — that was one of our big intentions," Wren said.
The department has welcomed 11 new paramedics in recent years, two of whom finished training and joined the ranks a few weeks ago. They were part of the department's largest recruit class in decades, which also included 10 firefighter/EMTs.
"Everybody who gets in this job is really hands-on. They want to be involved, they want to help, and that's exactly what we did for the last weeks. Eight to five each day, very busy, very hands-on. It's fantastic to see young folks walk in the door, eager to learn," Pleiman said. "They brought the greatest enthusiasm you could ask for, good energy was there every single day. It's a great people we brought in."
Pleiman said the hiring process was a daunting task. Despite a lingering nationwide recruitment challenge, Florence received upwards of 80 applications from men and women touting previous experience.
The starting salary for a Florence paramedic is around $70,000. Pay is even higher for firefighter/EMTs. It's not the highest pay range in the region, nor is it the lowest.
Pleiman said the department aims to be competitive, but he believes money isn't the only factor enticing new hires.
"I don't think pay has anything to do with it, really," Pleiman said. "We have a great social media marketing campaign, which is, I think, an accurate depiction of what we really do around here. We do train a lot. We do make a lot of runs. The camaraderie within the firehouse is fantastic. You really can't beat it anywhere. So, I think what we put out into social media, what people see, is an attractant for us, but it's also a retaining tool too."
Not including command staff, the recent recruits bring the department up to 78 personnel, all of whom are full-time. Sixteen of those first responders are now assigned to Station 34.
Those men and women have access to a fully equipped training room and training areas, a full-size kitchen and lounge area, a dedicated gym, and single-bed dorm-style rooms. The facility now also houses the fire department's administrative offices, which were previously attached to Fire Station 31 on Weaver Road.
While city departments can be funded in a variety of ways, be it through grants or levies, Aubuchon said Florence was able to foot the multimillion-dollar bill solely through the city's general fund.
"Florence has always been a very fiscally conservative-run city, so we do take our taxpayer dollars with a really diligent hand, managing them so they're used in the best way possible. And so we do plan ahead for capital projects, and we have excess reserves so we can set those aside so that we can build things that our community needs," Aubuchon said. "We have managed and budgeted our funds correctly for decades so that we can fund these high-dollar projects."
The community is invited to celebrate the opening of Fire Station 34, located at 8101 Dream Street, on May 8 from 2 to 4 p.m.
