Op Ed: The City Needs to Be Rescued

Each ward in Providence elects a city councilor. They act as delegates for their wards but represent all city residents on big issues. There is “one” Providence, it’s a true melting pot, and while there are varying levels of affluence spread throughout the city, the East Side, College Hill, and Downtown pay well over 40 percent of the property taxes but receive the fewest services.

The Humboldt Fire Station is in the Wayland National Register Historic District. It was built in 1906, and the architect was Edwin T. Banning, who also designed the original Temple Beth-El on Broad Street and the Roger Williams Park Casino. The property appears to have been abandoned with broken windows, façade and roof issues. It’s been on the Providence Preservation Society (PPS) endangered property list for years. The city is now selling the property, and Rochambeau Station will be on the market next year. So instead of protecting your property, we’ll see condos or a large apartment house. It is what it is.

In 2017, Mayor Jorge Elorza, with a “puppet” fire chief, used the budget crisis to close the Humboldt and Rochambeau fire stations and eliminate a ladder company that also covered the East Side. The argument was that they were trucks that saw the fewest runs and that stronger building codes had made the city safer. The fire department union ‘horse-traded’ with the city but went along with the closures, accepting more benefits and manpower changes.

The East Side still has acceptable response times – usually within the four-minute national standard – but if another incident occurs at the same time, not so much. At the time, the union president noted that the companies being decommissioned were rarely the first engine called to a fire. “You only care when the first truck gets there.”

While the argument for closing the stations had some fiscal merit, for the East Side residents it was another hit for paying the highest taxes with the fewest services. Since the closure, there have been several multiple-alarm fires on the East Side, including a major fire at a mansion on Orchard Avenue undergoing a million-dollar renovation, literally one block from the Humboldt station.

Providence has the second-oldest paid fire department in the country. Today, of the 45,000-plus annual calls, 73 percent are for medical assistance. Rescue 3, located at Branch Avenue, and Rescue 4, located on Washington Street, are among the busiest EMS units in the nation, responding to over 12,000 calls last year.

And that’s the real problem. The City doesn’t have enough rescue trucks, so a fire engine is dispatched along with a rescue truck on each EMS call. And when there are no Providence rescues available, neighboring cities provide mutual aid, and the wait times can be extensive.

And, the reality is that there will be more fire trucks taken out of service and more station closures.

We need the city council to focus on the “big picture” for all of the city’s residents, not just their wards, for the greater health and safety of the city. One thing that appears quite clear is that the city needs more rescue trucks. While you hope to never use the fire or rescue services, if something happens, you want them there pretty damn fast.