Emergency workers find a home in fire substation
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Four crew members of the city’s new fire substation welcomed their ambulance service counterparts and are looking forward to working with them. They spent some time arranging a physical move of bunks and lockers and said from here on out, they will be roommates in the station which is manned 24 hours a day.
“I think everything is going to work out just fine,” fire department shift supervisor Lt. Trevor Gribble said. “It’s hard to tell at this point because we’ve never worked this closely with any agency.”
Two ambulance workers will be on call with the fire department around the clock, which is something Gribble said will benefit those who need emergency services.
“We run a lot of wrecks and they’ll be there with us. They’ll be on hand. Before, they would have to come from the station all the way behind the hospital and we would get there before they would,” Gribble said.
“There’s not a lot we can do for a patient,” firefighter Stacey Swann added.
“We don’t have near the training they do, so hopefully, everything will merge together and we’ll have both services there,” Gribble added.
Since taking command at the city’s fire substation June 21, fire department officials reported 14 responses to incidents in the area.
McMinnville Fire Chief Kevin Lawrence has said the goal of its location was to reduce response times and Gribble said his perception is that goal is being met so far.
“It has cut our response time tremendously. We can get to this side of town so much more quickly. We have a lot of wrecks on the bypass and we can get there real easily,” Gribble added.