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Study Says San Diego Needs 14 More Firehouses
SAN DIEGO - A new study says San Diego County needs at least 14 more fire stations and an extra $92 million to build them _ but it doesn't say where the money will come from.
The study also calls for consolidating some of the county's dozens of separate fire agencies and adding more firefighters in the backcountry. The study says about 1,600 firefighters, nearly half of them volunteers, handle about 263,000 incidents a year.
The study will be presented to county supervisors next week. It was commissioned after voters rejected a new tax to fund fire services in the wake of 2007 wildfires that burned 1,300 homes and killed two people.
San Diego city Fire Chief Javier Mainar says the city's known for years that it needs more stations but the problem is how to pay for it.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The study also calls for consolidating some of the county's dozens of separate fire agencies and adding more firefighters in the backcountry. The study says about 1,600 firefighters, nearly half of them volunteers, handle about 263,000 incidents a year.
The study will be presented to county supervisors next week. It was commissioned after voters rejected a new tax to fund fire services in the wake of 2007 wildfires that burned 1,300 homes and killed two people.
San Diego city Fire Chief Javier Mainar says the city's known for years that it needs more stations but the problem is how to pay for it.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by WestPhilly on
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Imagine that, MORE firehouses! What a concept.
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Permalink Reply by Oldman on
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And then they need to staff them, and I guess apparatus would be nice to have as well. So much for that $92 million.
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Permalink Reply by FETC on
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Like to know what they paid for the comprehensive study.....
San Diego city Fire Chief Javier Mainar says the city's known for years that it needs more stations but the problem is how to pay for it.
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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Kind of like the hole in the roof, only leaks when it rains. Easy enough to forget about it when it's sunny, then full of regrets and concern when it's raining out. But it passes with the storm.
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Permalink Reply by Jay Nicholson on
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$300,000
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Permalink Reply by John Thomas on
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16 Firehouses at a budget of $92 million allocates $5.750M per house. In Chicago, you can build a house and buy equipment and apparatus for that price. An equipped CFD Truck or Engine average cost is $500K.
Did San Diego Fire explain to the voters, and the insurance companies, which are certainly raising insurance rates that 1300 homes destroyed average $70K per home on a $92M budget. I am certain each of those homes was worth more then a CFD Truck or Engine.
The taxpayer may be ignorant, and obvious does not want to pay the government for fire protection, but they need to be taught they will then pay the insurance company. That is just finance, now they can begin the discussion on what a life costs.
One of the most influential men in the Chicago and Illinois Firefighter Labor Movement is preparing to pass away from cancer, Mike Lass of the IAFF. We are having a banquet to honor his life and achievements on June 27th. We have a video tribute that really shows how he impacted our city and union, Local 2 during the 1980 strike on the CFD Blog. I will also post it here. Let's honor and remember the men that made our cities and jobs safer.
San Diego needs to get fired up and get the manning up so the city is safer, and the men that work there are safer as well. Good Luck SDFD!
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Permalink Reply by ashfire on
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The county I live in has a Capital Planning group and they have said for years that we need more stations so that there is a 3 to 5 min. response time to cover a area that a station is in. We have a very open area in the southern part of our county because its rural but more people are moving into those areas also there are areas where stations are being built to fill in response areas. We have a combination system of career and volunteer but with budgets some stations have personnel around the clock and others have them part time during the week.
Some stations have been closed because they were so close and combined to form one station and talk of closing and combining more that are close. These were on the northside of the county. The middle of the county two stations have been added with possible closure of one station, but more stations are being looked at.
One station was established for a high dollar resort area but was closed because of the budgets.
We have close to 50 stations now
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Permalink Reply by Marc on
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so would i! i am 18 in september, i will start putting in my interest cards every other month
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Permalink Reply by Adam Knuckles on
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wow, that's insane....
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We have a population of 840,000 and 498 square miles. Two stations are water rescue only with one station behind a fire station separate from that fire company. One was a rescue squad but went and bought a rescue pumper and now run as a engine company along with their rescue service. Some stations are just a couple of miles apart or less.
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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It generally costs around $500K to staff an engine or truck company almost anywhere, give or take a little depending upon the local real estate market, tax structure, firefighter salary and benefit structure, etc.
San Diego F & R is one of the most traditionally undermanned and under-stationed departments protecting a large municipality. That situation has been brought up to the taxpayers before.
However, California is the home of spending local and state taxes on lots of social programs at the expense of public safety, going all the way back to Proposition 13.
The primary exception seems to be San Fransisco, which has the organizational memory of the 1906 earthquake and conflagration, and the 1989 earthquake and Marina district fire, and which maintains firehouse coverage and staffing accordingly. San Fransisco has 1.7 times the number of firefighters, 6 more stations, and approximately the same number of people to protect as does San Diego. The really telling statistic is that SDF&R protects 331 square miles, while SFFD protects 47 square miles. That translates to much better response times for both first-due and especially backup companies.
There are anti-tax sites that complain about SFFD's costs, but the city keeps funding them, apparently because the voters there understand both sides of the risk-benefit equation.
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