Alki Unstaffed
Your Safety and Security Committee was alarmed by recent reports that our fresh water fire protection was about to disappear under the scissors of Seattle budget slicers. The word was, the old ALKI was going to get "un-staffed", effectively closing for business, Station #3 at Fisherman's Terminal as of January 1,2009. Station #3 and the ALKI, partially staffed and limited as she has been, was the product of a hard-fought and long-awaited gain brought on the backs of accumulating numbers of disastrous marina and houseboat fires.
What we know now, and to be fair, may not have been known at the time, is what I was told yesterday, by Fire Chief Gregory Dean: The veteran fireboat CHIEF SEATTLE will leave her home berth on the downtown waterfront and will trade places with the ALKI effective January 1, 2009.
Chief Seattle Standing By
The CHIEF will not be staffed, but will otherwise be at the ready while moored at Fisherman's Terminal. As before, the full alarm firefighting team will travel by land from Station #5 on Elliot Bay to Station #3, (roughly a 10-12-minute dash).
CHIEF SEATTLE will stay at Fisherman's Terminal until budgetary constraints allow for her planned retrofit, at which time she will be replaced by the new ENGINE ONE until the CHIEF returns to Station #3 duty. In other words, Chief Dean implied that we will not be without the presence of a SFD boat inside the locks.
The staffing formula will change, but my impression is that with the CHIEF's operational team skill sets, there may even be a hope of reducing the response time once the ALKI and her long 30-minute start-up procedure is removed from service.
Fire safety will always be among the highest priorities we demand of our public-service agencies. Your Safety and Security Committee will continue to monitor changes as they are imposed by this era of economic uncertainty.