The planned replacement of a large urban fire station will include a new feature. The municipality plans to co-locate a “Transitional Housing” center on the same plot of land.
Like another of the new generation homeless shelters, this fire station meets the same transitional housing location criteria:
“… where there is transportation, and there are great bus routes here. There are lots of services around here. There are lots of employment opportunities. Shoving it down somewhere where there is nothing, doesn’t help the population you’re trying to assist.”
There was much concern when this idea was recently presented to the on-duty firefighters at that fire station. Will the transitional housing person who missed curfew and is denied entry to the shelter going to ring the fire station door for a place to sleep?
Firefighter Continuous Duty “back in the day”
When career departments started, firefighters lived in the fire station. In FDNY they worked 151 hours a week with 3 hours off per day until the two-platoon system was implemented in 1922, reducing duty to 84 hours a week.
In Los Angeles, firefighters got one day off per month, plus an occasional day or night off without pay until the two-platoon system started in 1915, reducing to a 72 hour work week of 12-hour day/night shifts. For municipal firefighters at the start of the 20th century, the fire station was their home.
A Municipal Work Location
With firefighters working 12 to 48-hour work shifts, it is easy to consider the fire station as your second home. Some of us spend more time at the fire station than in any other structure in our sphere of life.
A decade of local government austerity means more creative uses of municipal resources. This means that an “authority having jurisdiction” considers the construction of a replacement fire station as an opportunity to co-locating a new homeless shelter on the same property.
Supporting the Community
We have provided other community support. Some fire stations are a Safe Haven, where an infant can be left with a firefighter. Five fire stations in Arlington, Virginia, have a lobby where a member of the public fearing a physical attack can enter the lobby, press a panic button that locks the exterior door and automatically calls 9-1-1.
Since 1983 some fire stations are designated as a Safe Place for children and adolescents. During the last brutal cold snap, fire departments opened their stations to provide warming centers.
LAFD Station 9 and their Skid Row neighbors
There is a 50 square block area of downtown Los Angeles that is classified as “Skid Row.” It represents about half of Station 9’s first due area. An October 2005 pamphlet by the Community Redevelopment Agency estimates 2,521 homeless living in Skid Row. Other sources place it at 5,000.
Fire Station 9 is located within the southern border of Skid Row on East 7th Street. I visited the station a dozen years ago and was not prepared to see so many homeless and sick people on the sidewalks. Adelante Film and TV was trying to make a documentary on the station in 2009, it has never been completed.
Firehouse Magazine’s 2017 National Run Survey identified LAFD Fire Station 9 as the busiest fire station in the country, with 33,380 total calls in 2017, a 22% increase from 2015. The LAFD press release notes the additional resources provided to Station 9:
- Fast Response Vehicle (FR9) first responder paramedic/firefighter unit
- Sober Unit (SR4) assigned to skid row area to assist with serial inebriates
- Advanced Provider Response Unit (APRU4) which treats and releases low-acuity patients in and around the California Hospital area.
A 2017 KCET article quotes Captain Chris Sebourn who states that 95% of the calls Station 9 handles are medical. The station staffs Paramedic Engine 9, Paramedic Truck 9, Paramedic Engine 209, Rescue Ambulance 9, Rescue Ambulance 209, EMT Rescue Ambulance 809 and EMT Rescue Ambulance 900.
“… it’s her resource”
A story from Alan Brunacini described the shock expressed by a ride-a-long chief when a fire company in front of Chief Brunacini’s car stopped to pick up an elderly female with bags of groceries at a bus stop. There was a severe rainstorm starting, a rare event in the desert.
The story varies with each re-telling, but at one point Chief Brunacini says to the visiting chief “… it’s her rig.” As a resident, her taxes paid for that vehicle. Providing temporary shelter and a ride to her home during a rare and severe weather event was the right thing to do.
During my visit to Station 9, I was impressed at the efforts made by the crews to keep their fire station safe. Maybe the supervisors and managers that will be impacted by this proposed east coast fire station/transitional housing facility should make a field trip.
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Featured image is a from the collection of Chief R. E. Dunn that is now part of the California Historical Society’s collection. “Leisure moments with the fire lads of Engine Co. No 28, Truck Company No 7 L.A. May 26, 1915” by Patterson Durston.
Los Angeles Fire Department photographs, PC 019; Box P004, Folder 1; California Historical Society.