Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:
After quickly deciding that replacing the Ravinia Fire Station is the city’s highest building priority, the Highland Park City Council must now decide what it can undertake and when. Without any equivocation, city council members agreed in early January that replacing the cramped fire station was a higher priority than expanding the Highland Park Public Library or renovating the Highland Park Country Club facility to serve as a senior center. Architects put the cost of a new fire station at $7.5 million.
The city is considering reconstructing the Ravinia Fire Station at its current location or on the Brown Park property across the street.
thanks Scott
#1 by Max O on February 13, 2018 - 12:05 PM
I have heard a rumor that Great Lakes is taking over fire protection for Fort Sheridan, again how come Highland Park is under-staffing the fire department? Will it take a unfortunate result for them to better staff the department?
#2 by ENG37 on February 13, 2018 - 8:50 AM
Highland Park also now covers Highwood as Highwood was disbanded in June of 2016. There have been a number of times where Northfield, Deerfield, and Lake Forest were all first due companies to some calls in Highland Park’s district. If you ask me 2 ambulances for 4 towns (Highland Park, Ravinia, Highwood, and Fort Sheridan) isn’t enough. Sometimes they will staff the truck with 2, but it’s not often. The truck is also a jump with the squad if they have to go out of town to Deerfield for a fire or fire alarm so that takes the squad out of service if they have to go. It’s 4 guys at each station with 3 on the squad at 33 and the batt chief in his buggy. If they staff the truck i’m not sure if they take the guy from the squad along with 1 for the truck making it a 2 man company or if they have 2 additional for a total of 6 at station 33. There is no question that they are understaffed.
#3 by Bill Post on February 13, 2018 - 4:37 AM
Max O, even though I am not from Highland Park, I can tell you for a fact that they have been staffing engine companies with only two men since at least the late 1980’s and probably longer. During the late 1980’s and up until 1998 Highland Park had four stations. Stations 32 and 34 were the same as they are now. There was a Station 31 at 1700 Greenbay Rd and Station 33 was part of the police station at 1677 Old Deerfield Rd, west of Highway 41.
At that time they had four engines that normally ran with two men. Old Station 33 had a medium-duty walk-around squad with one man assigned. There were two ambulances like today. Station 31 had an ambulance instead of Station 34, and the other was at Station 32. Station 31 was a modern, relatively new, three bay station on Laurel Avenue west of Greenbay Road. They also had a beautiful rear-mounted American LaFrance 100-foot Ladder Chief. Just like today, they didn’t normally have a crew assigned to the truck. They opened the new Station 33 around 1998 and closed Station 31 and Station 33 at the police station. Within a year or two a new Pierce pumper/squad was purchased. They assigned the single crew member from Squad 33 to the new Pumper/squad 33. Ambulance 31 was relocated to Station 34, Engine 31 was taken out of service, and Truck 31 went to the Station 33. The 1995 Sutphen 104-foot quint was already in service (without a crew of course).
Now you would think that since they took Engine 31 out of service they would have assigned that crew to Truck 33, but apparently they didn’t. So for at least 30 years their engines have had only two men assigned but Pumper/squad 33 normally has three. Engine 32 and 34 both are two-man companies housed with an ambulance. I understand that they normally respond together. The engine will assist the ambulance on an EMS run and the ambulance crew will assist the engine on a fire call. The ambulance crew is in essence a jump company on a fire. I did see the Highland Park Fire Department’s basic organizational chart for January 2017, and they are supposed to have 15 men assigned to each shift which doesn’t include the battalion chiefs. That should give them five per station per shift. I have to assume that the extra man is a fill in for others who are on leave because to my knowledge they are still running with only two men on Engines 32 and 34. As I am not in Highland Park someone else can probably give you more recent information. They really are taking a big gamble if they have a working fire in town. What if the ambulances are not available? Without the ambulances, the engines only have two men to get a line into operation.
#4 by Max O on February 12, 2018 - 12:55 PM
Maybe start staffing the rigs with three instead of two? How come Highland Park is cheap like this?
#5 by Bill Post on February 12, 2018 - 3:43 AM
It is really great that Highland Park officials are unanimous about the fact that building a larger, more state of the art fire station should have priority to expanding the library and building a senior center. In this day and age you never know with some elected officials.
Now perhaps someone can explain to them that their fire department is gambling as to whether or not they have an available truck on a day to day basis. I understand that they usually only run with four men including the battalion chief out of Station 33. That is only enough to operate the pumper/squad and to have the battalion chief drive his buggy. Somedays they may be lucky to have a fifth who can drive the truck to a scene. I don’t know how often that occurs. If they should have a working fire and the truck is not available, it is a good wait and also a gamble to get a mutual aid truck to the scene. The Deerfield FPD located to the west staffs their truck with a two-man jump company from Ambulance 20. Glencoe to the south doesn’t have a truck and Highwood to the north no longer has a fire department. Getting a truck on the scene in Highland Park is a real coin toss and that isn’t even dealing with the issue of adequately manning the truck.
Even though quints aren’t that popular maybe they ought to consider converting one of their engines so at least they can be guaranteed of getting an aerial ladder and truck equipment on the scene.