YPSILANTI, Mich. – The City of Ypsilanti is celebrating its bicentennial anniversary to commemorate the milestone of the Michigan Firehouse Museum by re-opening its 125-year-old firehouse.
In honor of the anniversary, Ypsilanti firefighters will live and work at the Old Firehouse just like they did more than a century ago.
“I’ve always enjoyed the old timers telling stories of running out of this station. And so I’m just excited to kind of experience what they experienced,” said Ypsilanti Fire Captain Jeff Schulz.
Starting Monday, for several days, four to seven firefighters will be stationed here during 24 hour shifts.
The new lodgings will take some getting used to.
“We’re all going to be sleeping in the open together, which is kind of odd for us.,” said Schulz. “And then, you know, we don’t have showers here. We don’t have an oven which is going to be really weird. Used to be able to cook our own food and stuff like that. So that’s ok, we’ll eat out today or something.”
Safety was also top of mind. Pagers have been installed to notify firefighters of an emergency as was a temporary exhaust removal system.
“In the old days, it started with horses, and then they went to gasoline engines and other diesel trucks,” said Dave Egeler from the Michigan Firehouse Museum. “And one of the things we had to do was build an exhaust system so that the trucks moving in and out weren’t going to fill their living quarters with exhaust fumes.”
The Old Firehouse was built in 1898 and served as the Ypsilanti’s fire station until 1975.