As usual, they responded from the department's cramped, one-story station adjacent to City Hall on Mount Pulaski's courthouse square, home to the department since the 1950s after fire destroyed the old Phoenix fire Department in 1947.

But soon, the department will answer calls from a new, $870,000 station that got everything but a bow put on it at Christmas.

The only thing preventing the department from moving to its new digs just off Illinois 121 on DeKalb Street is the arrival of new radio equipment for the command center.

Still, the equipment, chargers and radios, is to be in and operating by month's end, partly due to a $4,000 donation from The Tomlinson Trust.

At the heart of a 92-square-mile district that also includes Chestnut and Cornland, the Mount Pulaski firehouse has 19 volunteer firefighters, including chief John Aylesworth, and 12 emergency service responders.

Five miles northeast of Mount Pulaski on Illinois 54, the Chestnut station has 18 firefighters and emergency service personnel.

Cornland, also on Ill. 54, at the southern edge of the county, has four volunteer firefighters.

When the radio gear arrives, the fire trucks, firefighters' clothing, gear and radios all can be relocated to the new station within a day's time.

Mount Pulaski resident and project architect Todd Cyrulik of BLDD Architects in Decatur said the two-story living quarters needs only touchup painting and a door change before occupancy.

"Ask anybody, it's really just space" - space that's triple that of the current station, Cyrulik said. The new station includes a spacious meeting room and an equipment room for air tanks and the pumps to recharge them.

The new station also has 9,272 square feet of floor space and 1,000 feet of storage, he said, compared to 3,500 square feet of space at the old station, owned by the city, which will use the old station for a public works shop and storage.

Voters authorized the district in 1957. The new Mount Pulaski firehouse did not require a bond issue.

Relics from the old Phoenix Fire Department, organized in 1885, will be displayed in the new firehouse.

The January meeting of the Mount Pulaski Rural Fire Protection District board will be at 7 p.m. Jan. 24 at the station.