The Connection

One of the first residents to take up the microphone during the 20-minute “open mike” portion of the Jan. 14 meeting of the Fire Station 8 Task Force was Amanda Mackaye. “I just want you to see me,” said Mackaye. “I live next door to the station, and the county has talked about demolishing my house and the one next to it to make room for a new station; I want to be included in any conversation about this.”

Mackaye had been in the audience when the first public meeting on Fire Station 8 took place last year. When the graphic was thrown up on the screen showing houses that would be demolished for the replacement of the old fire station with a new one, she looked up and saw her house. “That’s my house,” she remembered telling the person next to her, “They are talking about demolishing my house.” Mackaye added: “That’s when people started to think Arlington County wasn’t handling the issue of Fire Station 8 too well.”

That may have changed.

After heated meetings last summer and fall, the scene at Langston-Brown Community Center on Thursday night last week was different. Roughly 30 residents attended the meeting. The Task Force set up to review the Fire Station proposal went out of its way to announce its independence from the County Board, with County Board Chair Libby Garvey arriving to give brief remarks and then as she departed, stressing she was “leaving the group to do its work.”

Noah Simon, appointed as head of the task force, laid out the mission. Simon made it clear he valued the historical value of the fire station, and also, the requirements of the fire department. He recognized the competing needs of Arlington residents. He spoke of the role of Fire Station 8 as more than a fire station: it was a community center, a gathering place, a historical place. He spoke with appreciation for the fire department, which had responded to his own son’s medical emergency with alacrity. Simon encouraged those on the task force and those in the audience to be open-minded and collaborative. “Anyone coming to the discussion of the station with a strong view about emergency services, also had to look at the issue through the lens of history of the community. And conversely, anyone looking at the issue through the lens of history, also had to look at it through the lens of emergency preparedness,” he said.

Simon also indicated he was assured when he agreed to take the position of Task Force chair, “This is not a done deal.” He also reminded task force participants that replacement of the building did not necessarily mean relocation.

Appointees to the task force present were Patrick Bogenberger, Arlington Fiscal Affairs Advisory Commission; Marguerite Gooden, native Arlingtonian and Hall’s Hill resident; James Shroll, Planning Commission; Richard Samp, North Arlington Civic Association; Rodney Turner, resident of Hall’s Hill; Joe Reshetar, Arlington Fire Chief; Frank McDermott, Bellevue Forest Civic Association; Alisa Cowen, Old Dominion Citizens Association, Arlington resident since 1980; Jim Pebley, Woodlawn area Civic Association, five years on Planning Commission; Noah Simon, Cherrydale resident, 20 months on the Arlington School Board; and June Locker, Arlington Department of Environmental Services, Bureau Chief in Facilities Design and Construction Group.

Simon described the Task Force’s charge: to review viable sites for replacement of the station, to recommend a site based on the consensus of the Task Force membership, and if no consensus is reached, to recommend 2-3 sites with a justification for each.

All information, including questions and answers, would be posted for the public to see and comment on at http://projects.arlingtonva.us/events/fire-station-8, and, in May a report would be made to the County Board. The Country Board would vote in July and the Task Force’s job would be over.

During the hour-long discussion between members, Reshetar noted it was important to decide what the problem was before they discuss a solution; he reminded attendees that replacement of the station had been identified in the Capital Improvement Plan because Fire Station 8 could not meet current requirements. It had been built in 1963 when shifts were different, the fire engines (apparatus) were different, safety considerations were different, and stations were not co-ed. There had been other changes: the Urban Areas Federal Initiative, a post- 9/11 initiative to make sure regional response to and recovery from acts of terrorism was upgraded had come into play; Ballston had changed and become a more demanding area; more advanced technology, like defibrillators, requiring more battery-powered equipment, took up space. The chief noted there was only one refrigerator in the fire station, and not enough parking spaces in the parking lot. One often could not get into compound because of the county vehicles using the fuel pumps. Responsibilities for the station had increased, and the HVAC system could not longer keep up with demand for cooling.

Against this backdrop, participants pursued several consistent threads: much of the conversation during the meeting revolved around the three studies done on Arlington fire station response times: the 1999 study on the whole system, the 1999 TriData study and the 2012 update of that study. North Arlington near Chain Bridge apparently had the poorest response times in the 2012 report.

Another conversation involved previous renovations or rebuilds of fire stations in Arlington: Fire Station 3 was rebuilt, not moved northward even though the data showed that would have been ideal: and the question was asked if the response times for Station 3, once it was rebuilt, had improved. Resheter said Fire Station 3 has always met its response time goals; Fire Station 8 is the only one that physically cannot meet the 4-6 minute response time.

The issue of call processing times, since that took an initial minute or two, and whether that could be reduced, was raised more than once. In the TriData report, call processing times were too long and should be addressed. The fire chief said the Emergency Communications Center has improved those response times and 2012 data may no longer be valid given those improvements. Several of the task force members questioned whether the TriData Survey figures from 2012 were current enough to rely on. The Task Force will review.

Turnout time and travel time were also discussed in connection with call processing time, and the task force committed to looking into a complete review of what response time really means.

The issue of whether McLean fire stations could answer some of the calls from the Chain Bridge Forest area which is consistently above the 4-6 minute time frame was raised more than once. While most believed the Fairfax County Fire Department is already taxed with the surge of growth around the Tysons area, several noted that building a new fire station in any of the three proposed sites would not actually reduce response times significantly to those areas near Chain Bridge. Alisa Cowen also pointed out that Fairfax County has far fewer stations per capita than Arlington does, and its response time goal is also longer: 10 minutes.

Some task force members noted Fire Station 8 cannot be the only fire station which does not meet all the requirements of a modern fire station post 9-11. If that is the case, why aren’t others also being renovated or replaced?

Simon, noting the importance of timely response, also reminded the task force that the budget was important: every dollar spent on Fire Station 8 was a dollar not spent on schools, potholes, and other needed services. Simon stressed: “There cannot be too many people involved in this process,” and “judging by the body language out there, there may be some skeptics here tonight who still believe they won’t be included in this process.” He said he had reached out to members of the community who were important in this process: the Lee Highway Alliance, which has met to discuss the future of Lee Highway, and Marymount University, which would be affected by new construction if the 26th Street site is chosen.

The task force allocated the last 20 minutes to questions from the floor. Several commented on the rational discourse as a huge step forward. Raquel Page, who lived in Hall’s Hill, noted concern that there is another way of getting to the same goal, but for some reason, relocation keeps coming up. A resident of Dorsey Woods revisited the question of putting a facility nearer to the North Arlington area which is underserved, and wondered if it really is 4-6 minutes for every single piece of geography in Arlington other than that area. The Yorktown Civic Association asked if analysis had been done on the response time to those northern areas if the move was made to Marymount and would homes near the Virginia Hospital Center then be less well served? He also pointed out that improvements made in housing materials meant that one hundred years ago there were many more structures that burned than there were in 2015, and that such changes also had to be factored in.

Several attendees commented among themselves after the task force had left for its tour of the fire station that this meeting was an improvement but many residents believed moving the fire station was a “done deal.”

Local resident Raquel Page said there were other pieces of property that could be part of a new fire station and Barbara Carter, of Hall’s Hill, said the fire chief’s “wish list” seemed to be high in terms of space: she wanted to see a differentiation between needs versus wants.

Joyce Reed, who said she has attended every meeting on Fire Station 8, echoed the importance of the fire station to her community. And Amanda Mackaye, whose house would potentially be at risk, said she thought the county was not taking into account the sacrifices some less wealthy residents had made to get into the Yorktown High School district. She and her husband had looked long and hard to be able to afford their house near the fire station. Simply having the county buy her house would not address her son’s educational plan. Residents remained wary of the outcome of the review process.