Santa Barbara is moving ahead with plans to make several changes to its fire facilities.

The City Council on Tuesday voted 6-0 to spend $100,000 on a station location and facilities master plan.

“The vulnerabilities we face in a city of our size are very extreme,” Santa Barbara Fire Chief Chris Mailes said. “We have a very, very complex city to protect.”

Station 3, at 415 E. Sola St., and Station 7, at 2411 Stanwood Drive, and the city training facility “are in need of near-term rebuilding,” Mailes said.

The training facility, at 30 S. Olive Road, consists of a four-story concrete drill tower and fire and ventilation props.

“The training facility on South Olive is in fair to poor condition,” Mailes said. “Our fire houses are housed in dated and historic structures. A lot of the stations were built in the 1950s and ’60s and have not been updated.”

Mailes and members of the fire department gave a presentation to the council in which he also cited some specifics about city fire programs. The city employs 105 employees and 94 firefighters and fire inspectors. It has about 11 administrative personnel.

The department responds to more than 12,000 calls a year and has eight stations, including the Santa Barbara Airport.

The department focuses on “fires, floods and falls,” Mailes said.

The department’s strengths and weakness were highlighted as part of a Community Risk Assessment and Standards of Cover Study.

Mailes assured the public that “we have a great fire department.”

“We have a staff that is eager, engaged and appreciative of working in the community, and that includes the firefighters,” Mailes said. “They are the ones out there handling the calls for service.”

As part of the work, the city is looking at rebuilding and relocating fire stations to meet modern needs. Changes are already apparent. The city a year ago moved to a single dispatch center so that the closest fire department responds to events.

Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon said she supports the expenditure of funds for the firefighters.

“We needed this so badly, and we need it implemented,” Sneddon said.

She said the fire stations need to be seismically safe.

“These are stations where firefighters are living, overnight, spending time, so this is very, very high priority,” Sneddon said. “The ask for funding is justifiable. We need to be able to have the funding to make this happen. There is no question about that, especially seismically unsound.

“The very people we hope will come rescue us are themselves at risk.”