PHOTOS: More than two years, $50 million and one ocean crossing later, San Francisco has its newest fire station. And it floats. The San Francisco Fire Department's two-story Fireboat Station 35 opens for operations Thursday on the Embarcadero at Pier 22½, more than a year after it was floated across the bay at low tide in the predawn dark from Treasure Island, where the superstructure was constructed. The 173-foot-long-by-96-foot-wide float that allows the station to ride the tides was specially fabricated in China to withstand tides and natural disasters. That could make all the difference during a fire or earthquake that could crumble buildings on land and potentially leave the station as a last bastion from which to dispatch rescuers and life saving equipment. The battleship-like building is the first and only floating fire station in the Western Hemisphere, according to San Francisco Department of Public Works spokeswoman Rachel Gordon.
