Fire department plans to build four stations

Dan Kulin

Friday, Nov. 15, 2002 | 11:22 a.m.

Fire engines will be screaming out of three new stations in fast-growing northwest Las Vegas by the end of January, city fire officials say.

The new stations are all within about 6 miles of each other between Rancho Drive and Fort Apache Road, north of Summerlin Parkway. The new stations, with a totat cost of just under $11.3 million, will be the first stations to be paid for with money from a special tax hike city voters approved in November 2000.

The new stations will help cut response times and lessen the workload for fire stations currently responding to emergencies in that area, Las Vegas Fire and Rescue Deputy Chief of Administration Rick Gracia said.

The city also has plans to tear down old Station 5, in the northwest near Valley View and Charleston and replace it with a new firehouse on the same property at a projected cost of $4.2 million. The new Station 5, which is to be paid for with city general funds, is expected to open around July 2004, officials said.

"Station 5 was state of the art in 1962," Gracia said. "It's simply too small now."

The three new stations, which will be stations 43, 44, and 45, are three of the four new stations fire officials said were needed during their successful 2000 campaign to pass the Fire Safety Initiative, a special property tax increase of 9 1/2 cents per $100 of assessed value. That special tax was projected to cost someone with a $100,000 home an additional $33.25 a year, Roy Lawson, a senior management analyst for the department, said.

The fourth station to be built using money from the special tax will be built in the Summerlin area after additional development occurs, Gracia said. The developer will provide the land for that station and help pay for construction, he said.

The special tax, which expires after 30 years, has also paid for new firefighters, new self-contained breathing apparatus, and a new fleet of fire trucks.

Gracia said he and others in the department are excited about the new stations, which the bring the total number of city fire stations to 15.

"The general problem is response times," Gracia said. "These (new) stations will cut down response times in the northwest, and take the heat off the downtown units that were going west."

Although Gracia didn't have recent statistics, he said during the campaign to pass the special tax initiative, department response times were about 7 minutes and 43 seconds.

"Our goal is to get response times around 6 minutes," he said.

City Councilmen Lawrence Weekly and Gary Reese said the new stations are needed to keep up with growth. "It's the growth that we've had that's made the need for the new stations," Reese said.

"They will head of the problem of even longer response times," Weekly said.

Weekly also said the replacement of Station 5 is "long overdue."

While Station 5 is being demolished and replaced, the firefighters and ambulance staff from that station will probably be moved to other nearby stations until the new building is ready, Gracia said.

Stations 43, 44, and 45, and the new Station 5 will all look identical when completed, because the department is using the same design for all new stations, department spokesman Tim Szymanski said.

Station 43 will be at 6420 Smoke Ranch Road, Station 44 will be at 7701 W. Washington Ave., Station 45 will be at 3821 N. Fort Apache Road, and Station 5 is at 1020 Hinson St.

The same design plan for those stations was also used for Station 41, which opened at Buffalo Drive and Wittig Avenue, in 2000, and Station 10, which opened at Martin Luther King and Charleston boulevards in June, Szymanski said.