Sunday, October 12, 2008
Editorial: A new fire station for Melrose
Roanoke plans soon to start building a new station. Residents should see better service.
From the RoundTable blog
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Within a few months, Roanoke's second modern fire station will come online and a third will be under construction. The last of the new stations has an added bonus for the city's Northwest residents: a police substation.
The sooner fire, rescue, ambulance or police can respond to calls for help, the greater the possibility of containing damage to property or lessening the severity of injuries. Getting help to people in need as quickly as possible is the underlying goal with the new fire stations.
But that doesn't mean the public has always embraced the city's plan that called for closing older stations and consolidating them into modern-day facilities.
Consolidation, even when it makes economic and safety sense, is often met with resistance. People don't like to see their neighborhood fire stations close any more than they do neighborhood schools. A sense of loss and, at times, misinformation accompany the moves. People worry a closure will mean they won't be as safe, even when the opposite is so. The older stations often can't accommodate today's larger fire trucks, and station locations make it difficult to quickly and safely move vehicles out the doors.
Both the passage of time and a commitment by the city to deliver on its promises should work to soften any residual resistance in Northwest as the city moves forward in replacing two older stations. In the coming weeks, Roanoke officials hope to share with residents and business owners the plans for a station at Melrose and 20th Street near the CVS pharmacy.
Officials can ease still-troubled minds by pointing to the success experienced with the first new station at Jefferson and Elm.
That station faced strong opposition by those who wanted to cling to the historic Church Street station it replaced. Now, though, with fire trucks no longer constricted by tight, one-way streets, firefighters have shaved response times by nearly a minute, according to Fire Chief David Hoback.
Firefighters expect similar results when they move by year's end to the second new station on Williamson Road. Northwest residents should expect no less from the third station.
The Melrose station will have in common with the other two stations a community room for people in the neighborhood. But it also comes with an added safety feature in the police substation.
This should help to cut response times by police to that quadrant and help to make the neighborhood safer.
