New Firehouse

I was going to let this issue rest but the Salisbury Fire Dept is really quite dear to me, and after reading some comments on other BLOGs I feel compelled to post once again. Respectfully of course!

It’s true the new house is only .6 miles away from the current Sta. 16, (I’ll take your word on that distance) but the problem making the response to the new house is Rt. 50. Now please bear in mind that the majority of the men and women who work and volunteer for the SFD generally live south of Rt. 50. The highway is rarely and issue when responding to the station for an alarm.
When the new station opens, these same volunteers will have to contend with the traffic on Rt. 50 to answer the alarm. Like it or not, there is still quite a bit of “beach traffic” in the summer time even with the bypass taking the bulk of it. Face it, during the day at any time of year there is plenty of traffic out there. If the drawbridge is up, they must now find an alternate route to the station. That would Division St to Isabella, or Mill St. to Isabella. Either way there will be an additional traffic issue due to many, many, many other people also using these routes to escape the wait for the bridge. Now I grant you the odds of having an alarm at the same time the bridge is up are not that great but the occasional possibility does exist.
Does this alone warrant that a station not be built on the west side? Of course not. A station has been needed over there for years in my opinion.

There are answers for these issues. It may mean that response assignments will have to be changed. It may mean that additional personnel will need to be hired for 24/7 duty crews.

I would hope that the volunteer recruitment for the African-American community would increase. This would definitely call on a new resource and could at least in part be an answer to the RT. 50 quandary.


Possibly, many of these solutions are in the mix already. I would like to think so. Chief See & DC Gordy have certainly received a lot of bad reviews lately, and maybe they are not popular among the troops, but like it or not, they are both well learned. If thought has been given to response and district alterations, maybe it’s time to make it public. At least bring out the rough drafts and accept intelligent input for improvement.

So far as so many volunteers refusing to respond to the new station, I cannot believe it’s as bad as some “self proclaimed expert and fux pau spokesman” claims it to be. I assure you I have been around the fire service for some time. There are always those that grumble. Many of them look for reasons to grumble. But I can assure you, most of them grumbling or not will make the move to the new station and continue to do the absolute best they can for the citizens. And for those very few (if any) that do quit---well, you weren’t needed anyway because your heart just wasn’t in it to begin with.

All this is just food for thought. Civilized comments are welcome.

One final note----Contrary to the narrow-minded blogger with severe tunnel vision that believes I am the "Mare"-------------NOT!