THE GOOD CITIZENS OF AUSTIN, MINNESOTA, will have to sleep more carefully starting January 1. That is the date that the city supervisors have chosen to discontinue staffing their only fire station during nighttime hours.
Austin Fire Department
The fire department has 10 fulltime firefighters, including the chief and his assistant, and about 21 paid-on-call volunteers. Currently the station has firefighters on duty 24 hours a day. But for reasons that the city leaders refuse to divulge to the taxpayers, the firehouse will shut down at 2230 hrs. each night and re-open at 0700 the next morning. Presumably it will still be accessible during the night for people coming from home for emergency calls, but the response times will be remarkably longer, not to mention the uncertainty of how many FF’s will show up.
The new work schedule has the full-timers divided into two shifts of 4 FF’s each with one crew on duty from 0700 to 1530 hrs. and the second shift works from 1530 to 2230 hrs. The day shift is required to take a 30 minute unpaid lunch break where they leave the station without taking a radio or pager with them.
While the city is facing a reduction in state financial assistance, this move does not reduce the FD budget at all. This puzzling restructuring is being planned by Fire Chief Dan Wilson who is on record as saying, “The worst thing that ever happened to the fire service was putting beds in the fire stations.”
Most people are speculating that the city manager, Jim Hurm is promoting this as some sort of strange bargaining device with the union Local 598 over their contract that expired a year ago. Hurm denies that while saying, “We want whatever is good for the city as a whole.” However, neither the mayor or the city council will explain how shutting down the firehouse while the town is asleep is good for the city.
Austin is the home of Hormel Foods’ headquarters and main packing plant. Since Hormel reportedly does not have its own fire brigade, it is also at the mercy of this strange decree.
The Austin Daily Herald has this latest REPORT.
Austin Fire Dept. WEBSITE.
