Under the proposed city budget, Fire Station 18 in East Long Beach is slated to share a fire engine with Fire Station 1 downtown, which means the Eastside station would be closed during the day. When that news was announced July 30, 5th District Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske showed she was more than a little upset about losing one of her stations.
To support her cause, Schipske has started a blog to try to keep her station open -- www.savestation18.com. The blog has an informative section about fire department terms and raising interesting questions, such as whether 5th District residents' fire insurance rates could be affected by losing a fire station for part of the day.
On Tuesday, the council will be discussing the Fire Department and the Police Department budgets, as well as hearing from the public, during a budget workshop at 3 p.m. in City Hall.
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we need our fire stations and our schools in the 5th dist. what else does Gerrie Schipske going to loose in this part of here dist.
citizen, 5th dist.
Fight for Station 18. No one, not the mayor or anyone on the city council can assure me that response times will not be affected by the daytime closure. My husband had a major heart attack last February "during the day". The response time from 18 was less than 5 minutes. I do not want to think about what would have happened had they been closed and the next closest station was out on another call. The fact that only a small number of calls responded to by station 18 were fires is not even a valid point. They are needed for assistance with medical emergencies. Thank God I have been in critical care for 25 years and I recognized the signs of a heart attack. Before I even had the aspirin dissolved in his mouth, the FD arrived to help. If the city council must cut, start with the city perks that are afforded to city officials...cars, expense accounts, etc. Look close to home before you go out and ask the citizens to once again give something up.
If you think you need to cut an engine company this is a bad way to do it. Instead of sharing an engine, darken one of the 2 engines that you run out of Station 1. This leaves 18's available 365.
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