tl;dr
- The Engine Company 26 building (1340 Rhode Island Ave NE) is planned for retirement; the stated reason is it’s no longer the appropriate size or located far east enough to accomodate current population size/distribution
- Previous site selections efforts on DC-owned land eventually focused on heavily forested interior blocks like the Model Cities co-location in the Queens CHapel Forest Patch in Langdon. FEMS has indicated they are no longer pursuing these as of May 2023.
- In April 2025, FEMS officially released a Request For Space, soliciting non-DC landowners to propose sale, lease, or collaboration on a new suitable Engine 26 site; outreach is underway to move this solicitation forward
background
Engine Company 26
Some sources
- Wikipedia article on Engine Company 26 (interchangeably refers to the FEMS company and the historically preserved building it currently occupies)
- DGS project page containing various RFP elements related to building a new Engine Company 26 facility in Fort Lincoln (though there are also references to Brentwood)
E26 service area, captured from Fire And EMS Station Locations at OpenDataDC
In the above map, you can see the service area extending through Fort Lincoln, with the station (the west-most pin in the region) all the way to the west side. The other two pins are FEMS warehouse and fleet facilities, not dispatch facilities.
