Vancouver Firehalls

This project aims to keep current the tagging of Vancouver fire stations.

Tagging guidance

This is the scheme I came up with:

• amenity=fire_station
• name=Firehall No. X
• operator=Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services

The tags were all over the place in terms of names and so I've decided to normalize them. My reasoning for the above choice is that this is the spelling that's used on buildings and signs. Also, the neighbourhood that's often included on the building is redundant given that it's already present in OSM.

As much as possible, I moved the metadata to the ways, but in some cases (e.g. Firehall 4 and Firehall 10), the building is shared with something else and so I used a node for those.

Currently in OSM

All 20 firehalls are currently in OSM:

• 1 - Strathcona
• 2 - Downtown East Side
• 3 - Mount Pleasant
• 4 - Fairview
• 5 - Champlain (temporary) (the new one is still under construction)
• 6 - West End
• 7 - Downtown
• 8 - Yaletown
• 9 - Grandview Woodland
• 10 - University
• 12 - Kitsilano
• 13 - Riley Park
• 14 - Hastings Sunrise
• 15 - Renfrew
• 17 - Fraserview
• 18 - Shaughnessy
• 19 - West Point Grey
• 20 - Victoria
• 21 - Kerrisdale
• 22 - Marpole

"Missing" from OSM

What about the two numbers missing from the list above?

• Firehall No. 11
  • corner of East 12th Avenue and St Catherines Street
  • demolished in 1935 according to the Firefighting Wiki and the Vancouver Fire Fighters Historical Society
• Firehall No. 16
  • at the foot of Drake Street on False Creek according to the Vancouver Fire Fighters Historical Society

External sources of information

• Official list of firehalls from the City of Vancouver (including map)
• Wikipedia's list of firehall locations
• Tons of historical and current information on the Firefighting Wiki
• Historical info and photos on the Vancouver Fire Fighters Historical Society website and Facebook page
• OsmHydrant
• OpenFireMap (also see the project page)