What a Vacation!!

Anyways it seems as though I have been gone for a month. I will probably just post several incidents on this one thread. However that is not the big news. The big news is the RFFA in the paper. Oh yes right there standing up for the Historical Station #1. Chief still stands by his plan of closing and opening stations 1 and 3 = the new #1, 5 and 9 = the new #3, and station 10 will be opened on Williamson as #5. Oh yeah and they closed #12 a couple of years ago. What about the firefighters riding in open cabs. What about almost half of our fleet of engines being 15 years old. I don’t see City Council voting on a plan to purchase 6 new engines. What would that cost. Well it depends on if they are going to get a $250,000 engine or buy some more of those tele squirts at $400,000. So you are looking at $1.5 to $2.4 just on updating our engines. Not to mention the Quints that are costing more and more each day. I wonder how long those will last. Oh and that is not opinion. I am sure if you bump into certain people maybe around the Service Center area and maybe mention those trucks they might fill you in. Then again they might not.

And they are going to close Station #1. Let us talk about that for a minute. They are going to spend how much on the Art Museum, something like $48 million(don’t hold me to it). Yet they are going to shut down one of the oldest working museums in the State of Virginia found right here in Roanoke two blocks from this new museum. What this can’t be happening. I searched National Registry of Landmarks for fire stations in Virginia and all I could find was Fire Station #1, Fire Station #6- both in Roanoke, and a Volunteer company somewhere else. This doesn’t mean that it is the oldest working Fire Station in Virginia, however it is the oldest working Fire Station that is a National Landmark.

Now given this opportunity it could actually save Citizens money. Let us think about it.
Station #1 is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. People, children, field trips, etc. stop in day after day, all the time. You can go to Station #1 and be shown the Fire truck, an additional fire truck donated by the Kazim Shriners, the bay, the bunk room, the kitchen, along with other historical stuff like the pompier ladders, the jump net, the chew marks on the walls from the horses, all of this stuff for free. The tour guides(firefighters) are already there unless they are out on a call etc. What beats that. And the firefighters want to be there. They like seeing the visitors, they like everything about Station #1.

Station #1 represents the department, its members and its history. I do not know what more you could ask for out of a museum.

I have to stop now. I will post more tomorrow. The fires, the shooting, Daniel Goodwin on the cover of the paper looking like a pro., and all that other stuff like the land purchases and the supposed “Racist Department” that some of us work for according to some citizens.