Fire Station Plan is Flawed

March 22, 2002

Every Westport resident needs to pay close attention to this latest proposal by Diane Farrell and the Finance Committee. Closing the Green's Farms Fire Station has a significant detrimental impact on the entire town and not just the eastern portion of town known as Green's Farms.

The plan presented by Fire Chief Richard Gough to redeploy the two firefighters now assigned in Green's Farms to provide a third firefighter on a truck at the remaining three fire stations is seriously flawed. The most serious to my mind is that one would think that if a financially strapped town had to consider closing a fire station (usually a last resort and ludicrous for this affluent town which has been spending money on every conceivable idea), they would logically look to the fire station that has the least number of calls (responses). Not in this town. The administration chose the one that has the most responses (1,010 last year). Further, it proposes that the preponderance of this load be picked up by the station that had the second highest number of responses (a few less than Green's Farms). For a sense of perspective, the other two stations were in the 800 to 900 range. Supposedly, this shift in load is going to be offset by having a third person on the truck (hard to believe). The overall effect is increased response times everywhere in town.

Under the proposed plan, a small portion of the southwest area of Green's Farms will be picked up by the Saugatuck Station which entails crossing over the river on a narrow movable bridge which can be open for marine traffic at the wrong time and which many times has bumper to bumper traffic requiring several light changes to cross. Also, a significant area of the town will fall outside of a 1 1/2 mile radius from a fire station which is one of the criteria used to rate a town's fire safety. This factor will probably result in a lowering of the town's rating along with an increase in fire insurance premiums for everyone in town.

With all due respect to the members of the Safety Committee, their agreement to the proposal has to boggle everyone's mind. Closing a firehouse certainly falls into a much more important category and requires a lot more study than if and where a speed bump should be added. Their priority should have been to fight for the funding for the third person per truck if in fact they believe that it is a necessity. And if so, the administration should be looking for the funding with cuts elsewhere in the budget rather than the old, tired cry that we have to cut essential services such as fire and police.

Leonard Puglia, Westport