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Fires Refuel Heights Activists: Residents Renew Call for Fire Station

Posted on: Tuesday, 21 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Jon Fox, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Times Leader

Mar. 21--WILKES-BARRE -- Simultaneous fires on Carey Avenue and South Welles Street last week have rekindled a debate over the closure of the Heights fire station.

After months of silence, activists pushing to reopen the station in the hilltop neighborhood plan to argue the issue before city council again on Thursday.

"This is exactly what I've been preaching to the choir for a year now," Denise Carey said Monday of two fires striking at once.

Carey, a vocal critic of the decision to close the station, contends an operating station in the Heights would have resulted in a better emergency response from the city.

The city responded to the first fire on Carey Avenue within 3 minutes, and the second in just over 7 minutes, city officials said.

"Most likely we believe three properties wouldn't have been destroyed and 13 people wouldn't have been homeless right now," she said.

That's a position disputed by Mayor Tom Leighton, fire department officials and Councilwoman Kathy Kane, a Heights resident and advocate of a new neighborhood station.

For much of 2005, the issue of the dilapidated East Station cropped up repeatedly at city council meetings.

The city closed the station temporarily in 2004, with the closure becoming permanent in 2005 when it became clear repairs would be too costly.

Neighborhood advocates of the station pushed the issue as well as council members Kane and Jim McCarthy, both Heights residents.

But Leighton was emphatic: the East Northampton Street fire house will not be reopened.

The debate slowly died after the city slapped Carey with more than $11,000 in legal fees after her failed attempt to change the city charter as an avenue to reopen the East Station.

Leighton and fire officials contend that a station in the Heights would have not made any difference in the response to the South Welles Street fire on March 13.

All available equipment was on Carey Avenue when the alarm was sounded for South Welles Street, and that would have been the case even if the station on East Northampton Street had been open, they said.

Even Kane, one of the most dogged proponents of a station in the Heights, agrees. "It wouldn't have helped even if the Heights firehouse was open," she said.

Of the fire department staffing issue raised by Assistant Fire Chief Tom Makar, also president of the union that represents the city firefighters, Kane doesn't believe it affects safety.

After the fires, Makar called again for the city to raise the minimum staffing level per shift from 14 to 17 firefighters.

Kane says that has more to do with overtime hours than safety. Under an increased staffing level, if at anytime there were fewer than 17 on-duty personnel could be called in for overtime hours.

The day of the two fires there were 19 firefighters on duty, she said. "Five of them didn't show up."

Kane says that if a fire does occur additional firefighters are called as needed.

As for Leighton, he's unconcerned about any possible political ramifications this issue may spark.

"When I was elected, I knew I couldn't make political decisions," he said. "I knew I had to do what was right for the entire city."

Jon Fox, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 829-7219.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Times Leader

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Source: The Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.)

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