I was aware that the glass tower atop Fire Station #2 in Oakhurst had solar panels on it, but I certainly didn’t know this fun-fact.

From the Fire Station #2 Fact Sheet…

The Fire Station No. 2 Tower

A society that values sustainability will have a strong sense of its dependence on the planet Earth

The glass tower at Fire Station No. 2 is a ‘sun-tracker’. The blue color band and the red ‘2’ that can be seen moving across the glass of the tower are both created by the sun passing through colored glass mounted on the tower.

The blue band is the tower’s ‘gnomon’. A gnomon is traditionally the raised triangle on a sun dial that casts a shadow to tell the time and day. The red ‘2’, of course, represents the name of the Fire Station. The sun to the south of the tower strikes these stained glass surfaces and projects their color onto the face of the white glass. Each hour of the day and each day of the year the blue band and color red glass will demonstrate the height and angle of the most important star.

Cool!

Yesterday, Rebecca wrote in to Decatur Metro asking what was up at the Oakhurst Fire Station. She reports that the doors are locked tight and the grass is looking a little unkempt these day. Well, due to my obsessive Decaturga.com trolling, I knew that Oakhurst was indeed getting a new, funky $1.6 mil firehouse under the bond fund projects, but wasn’t sure when and why the old one was already closed up.

Well, like he read my mind, today Carl writes in with a link to an AJC article, which reports that the Fire Station received final approval this past Monday. Aside from the fact that there was no meeting this past Monday (approval was given on the 16th), the article states “During construction, the one firefighter company will work out of the city’s main fire station downtown. The move could affect response times, though some residents shrug off the move.”

But Carl begs to differ and reiterates Rebecca’s eyewitness account…”Any idea when the station actually closed? I believe it was months ago. The article makes it sound as if only during construction will the firefighters be moved to downtown, when in reality the place has been abandoned for ages.”

So, there’s your answer Rebecca! Does anybody have an approximate date of when Station 2 actually closed?