It's no secret that Denton County is booming.
A recent U.S. Census report of the top 15 fastest-growing cities in the country includes five boomtowns in North Texas.
Denton and the surrounding area made the list, which means county and city departments must make plans to keep up with the growth.
On Friday, a symbol of that new growth is being officially celebrated – the all-new Denton Fire Department Station 9.
Get top local stories in DFW delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC DFW's News Headlines newsletter.
“It's a dream come true for us. This is something we've been talking about for almost a decade since we got into the aircraft rescue firefighting,” said David Boots, public information officer for the Denton Fire Department.
A grand opening is planned for 10 a.m. Friday, with city leaders and county officials getting a closer look at the state-of-the-art building and new 3,000-gallon aircraft response firetruck.
The keyword is ‘aircraft’ for Station 9 because the location is strategic. It's on the west side of I-35 in Denton, right next to Denton Enterprise Airport.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
Believe it or not, the airport is the 60th busiest in the entire country.
Even though they don't have commercial airline operations, the airport has corporate jets, charters, freight aircraft, and two flight schools using the airport every day.
“It's a very, very busy general aviation airport,” said Boots. "So, just in this area alone for Station 9, we've got a huge manufacturing district. We've got millions of square feet of warehouse. We have Peter Built Trucks, TetraPak, Target, WinCo, and Aldi distribution centers, lots of others."
To have all of this new activity means they need to have proper coverage for aircraft rescue firefighting – that includes the specialized yellow firetrucks seen at many airports that are designed to handle aircraft emergencies.
The newest ARF unit, known as ‘Bigfoot’, weighs 93,000 pounds and joins another that is based at the airport.
Before Station 9, the closest fire station was 5 minutes away near the University of North Texas. If there were an aircraft emergency at Denton’s airport, crews would have to drive that distance to the one ARF vehicle on site and then spend more crucial minutes getting their gear together to respond.
Now with the new facility right next to Denton’s airport terminal, the response time is just over one minute.
"We're planning for future growth, and we need to be able to cover all of the aircraft that are coming in and out of this airport," said Boots.
Station 9 will also handle all the newcomers moving to the western side of Denton County. Around 25,000 new homes are being built in this area.
In the next decade or so, Boots said Denton Fire is looking at building four more fire stations throughout the county to keep up with it all.
"All the growth that's been in Collin County over the last few decades, it's now in Denton County,” he said. “There's a big movement coming up from the Fort Worth area. There's movement coming in from Collin County area and it's converging right on Denton. And with our location being right here on I-35, it makes it very, very popular for growth.”
Another element of Station 9 is a state-of-the-art decontamination bathroom and infrared sauna, designed to help firefighters reduce their exposure to toxins and reduce their risk of cancer.
Denton Fire Department plans to take that technology into two other older stations that they plan to update next year.
The grand opening of Station 9 also coincides with the 150th birthday of the Denton Fire Department, which is one of the oldest in the state, dating back to 1874.
