Closing Causway Fire Station

As a professional firefighter, I am appauled to hear that the City of Sandusky is thinking about closing the fire station at the end of the CP causway, {next to Breakers Express}. That station ran almost 3500 calls last year, many of which were medical runs to CP. With the amount of taxes that CP pays I am surprised that they are not making a bigger stink about this. Doesn't CP realize that there insurance rates will rise because the distance from them to the nearest fire station will be farther? I must encourage all members of this site who are residents of Sandusky, to support your firefighters and let your city officials know what a bad idea this is.
*** Edited 5/14/2005 6:24:51 AM UTC by Grady***

I'm not familiar with how the City of Sandusky is managed, but my town could have made cuts in other departments when it was decided that a fire station would close. Doesn't CP have a great amount of trained and qualified personnel in their own emergency staff?

Ok, let me try to explain how this works. CP does have emergency personell, as they do there own police, but in the case of a major fire, or a person who needs transport to the hospital, the Sandusky Fire department responds. Now, many people may say, "I don't care if that station closes, I live way accross town", the problom is when a run occures in the area that was covered by the causway station a different station must respond to it, you know the one down the street from your house. Now, not only does it take them a lot longer to get there, a fire doubles in size every minute and you loose 10 percent of your brain cells every minute, in the case of a cardiac arrest, now the area where you live doesn't have any fire protection or rescue service because all the firefighters are covering that run that used to be covered by the causway station. I say leave the station open, I they want to make cutbacks why don't the Mayor and and other elected officals clean there own offices and lay off a few janitors. How soon we all forget about the events of 9-11, then everybody loved the firemen and police officers, now all they want to do is lay us off.

I smell a power play by the city here. "The city cannot afford to keep this station open, but if Cedar Fair will kick in some (or all) of the operationg expenses, we'lll keep it open." They are bound and determined to get their pound of flesh somehow.

I agree Dutchman, that is a common ploy that cities love to pull on Lg companies. With the city I work for it is the Ford Motor Company. "We will let you build that big building if you buy us a new ladder truck", kind of a thing.

Question:

Does that fire station have difficulties in the peak season with the traffic on the Causeway? From a practical standpoint, would it make more sense to relocate that station a couple of blocks away to a point where Cedar Point traffic does not interfere with its operation? Of course traffic is supposed to yield to emergency vehicles, but curb-to-curb, bumper-to-bumper traffic can't exactly get out of the way...

I don't know if that has any bearing at all on the situation, but it's an interesting question anyway.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Who also suspects that Dutchman is right. After all, he usually is... :)

I am sure they do have some trouble, but there is no plan in the works to replace it. There is a side street that they can use to help get around traffic. Sad thing is they are the second busiest station in the city, other than downtown. Hopefully Cedar Point will never have a major emergency since help will have to come from a lot farther away and still have to deal with the same traffic when they get close to the Point. For that matter we should all hope that, heven for bid, none of us has a heart attack or a major injury, cause we will be goners. :{

This is somewhat out of left field, but does anyone think that they don't care about the fire station closing because of them wanting to relocate the parking lot to the mainland in the future?

I sure hope they have more sence then that.

There is on point EMS that works at the Paramedic level and is capable of transporting patients to the hospital.

Sounds like the same problem as any other city to me. It's not like they have a lot to choose from with only three stations, second busiest or not. Schools, services, amenities... they're all going with the tax base to the suburbs. You want to save jobs for the police and fire departments? Figure out how to fix the income shortage. Unless of course you think the city is being run by a bunch of fools... But when your city is losing population as fast as Sandusky is, it's hard to keep the books balanced. I guess i just don't see the city trying to get anything from the park through this action.

This is extremely stupid on the city's part, and I can see this as a plan to get money out of CP since the parking tax failed. I live in a suburb that cut staff from the fire dept. Although no stations closed, the number of firemen fell below a certain level and everyone's insurance will most likely go up.

Here's an earlier story from May 11 that has a little more background.

Fire station cuts staffing; causeway station could close

By BRANDI BARHITE
brandibarhite@sanduskyregister.com

SANDUSKY - The daily staffing at the cash-strapped Sandusky Fire Department has been reduced to a point where one less firefighter could mean closing the fire station at the Cedar Point Causeway.

Fire Chief Mike Meinzer notified firefighters Monday that with 10 pay periods completed in 2005, the fire department has used 70 percent of its overtime budget, and will have to reduce minimum staffing from 13 to 12.

Meinzer said he has spent about $122,000 on overtime this year to make up for the six positions the department was forced to leave vacant because of required budget cuts.

With summer approaching, Meinzer said he would have to pay more overtime and double-time to keep staffing at 13 because of vacations. The department's 2005 budget is $4.5 million.

Matt Lesch, president of the International Association of Firefighters Local 327, said the cuts are putting residents and firefighters at risk, particularly if the Cedar Point Causeway station is closed. Lesch filed a safety grievance Tuesday with City Manager Mike Will.

"Our goal right now is to make the residents aware of what is coming so they aren't surprised when a fire engine doesn't show up for 15 minutes," Lesch said.

Meinzer said he didn't want to do it, but with the potential of having only three firefighters at each of the two outside stations and six firefighters downtown, the incident commander is at a liability risk for not following standards and recommendations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Fire Protection Association, he said.

Meinzer said that when responding to a fire, two firefighters should be outside the fire, while two go in, for instance.

Meinzer said if staffing dips below 12, the consensus among the battalion chiefs is to close the station at Cedar Point Causeway, although he said he will leave that decision to commissioners.

The fire chief said the causeway fire station is preferred because the station isn't blocked by the railroad tracks that are on the west side. However, Lesch said the east side its a high-traffic area because of tourists going to Cedar Point.

Sixty-four percent of the city's emergency responses come from the central part of the city with 21 percent from the causeway area and 15 percent from the west side. The station handled 3,279 emergency calls in 2004.

Meinzer said the fire department budget has 53 firefighters, including himself. Last year, he maintained staffing by factoring in salaries and pensions of five vacant positions into his 2004 budget. He couldn't this year because of the required 10 percent cuts, he said.

The department moved all its ambulances downtown a few weeks ago because of a lack of staffing.

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Not being offered a recent job opportunity in Sandusky could have been the best thing to happen to me as of late. What does Garth Brooks say? "Unanswered prayers."

The story focuses on Cedar Point but what is not mentioned is that the east station services the poorest neighborhoods in the City of Sandusky. Cedar Point might be affected which could hurt them for 5 months of the year but there are communities on that side of town that would be affected year 'round.

The Cedar Point shadow has probably grown large enough that they should be able to provide addiditon fire rescue services for themselves. I think Cedar Point still plows the snow for the folks on the Chausee so it isn't like this would be unprecedented.

This is an example of goverment math. They don't hire fireman to replace the ones that retire thinking they will be saving money. But in reality they are losing money because they have to pay overtime, at a time and a half rate, to the other guys to cover the shifts. Everybody just remember not to get into an accident on the way to the point, because it will be a fifteen minute wait for the extrication crew to get there to cut you out of your car. :{

Grady,

Paying overtime to 12 guys is cheaper than paying salary AND benefits to 18 guys. Health insurance is out of control and that is why you are seeing layoffs.

There is another possible power play at work here.

When a city/township/whatever is strapped, and they need to start raising taxes, a common first step is to announce the imminent closure of fire/police stations. The fire/police unions raise the predictable stink about public safety (see the 15 minute quote in the Register article above.) This generates lots of ink, raising the citizens' ire. The city responds with something like "our hands are tied, because of course we don't want to raise taxes..." until people are practically begging for it.

Ann Arbor does this kind of crap all the time.

All of this is well and good but you still need good fire protection. I would rather pay for that then Quamy's {spelling?} hookers and trips to Vegas.

Yeah, the Sandusky city council also generated lots of local ink last year when they had a "business meeting" at Put-In-Bay, paid for by the tax payers.

Exactly, thats what I mean, if they would cut back on all the crap they could afford a lot of things. Also, Chief Wahoo, minimum staffing means men working that day, it is a 50 plus man department. They need 14 men on duty each day, to meet NFPA requirements for 2 in and 2 out, that is staffing 6 downtown, not 18. I am familiar with the cities argument that it is cheaper to pay overtime than it is to hire more people, but what they fail to remember is that when people work lots of overtime it creates more overtime because they call in sick more often, due to stress, fatigue, ect.