An engine that has long gone unused at Sunrise Fire Station will
soon be rolling out the station’s doors, thanks to a few new hires
that will nearly restore the understaffed department.
Gilroy – An engine that has long gone unused at Sunrise Fire Station will soon be rolling out the station’s doors, thanks to a few new hires that will nearly restore the understaffed department.
“We’ve really looked forward to this,” said Fire Chief Dale Foster, who announced Tuesday via e-mail that a three-person Engine 81 would replace Rescue 81, a waterless ambulance, at the end of the month. “It’s vital to ensure equal response capability for all the three major districts in the city right now … It’s just another indication that we’re moving forward.”
Since the Sunrise station opened in 2004, its only engine has usually sat idle, with too few firefighters to staff it. Instead, the rescue rig sped to the scene: an ambulance loaded with rescue tools and protective gear, but no water. When fires ignited in northwest Gilroy, residents relied on engines from Las Animas and Chestnut fire stations to snuff them out – a factor in Sunrise’s lagging response times, which were longer than those of any other Gilroy district, fire analyst Dan Farnsworth reported in January.
Concerned by those numbers, the firefighters’ union agreed to operate Sunrise’s engine with only three firefighters instead of four, the citywide minimum, relaxing the prized “two in, two out” safety rule that requires two firefighters to hang back when two others dash into a dangerous place. Still, with only two firefighters at the Sunrise station, its engine couldn’t be used.
With the help of paid-call firefighters, the department was able to roll out the Sunrise engine a handful of times this year, Foster said, but only “very sporadically.” The engine was supposed to go into effect in January. But that plan unraveled in late December, when two Gilroy firefighters left the department for San Jose’s – a demoralizing loss for the department, union leaders said. Faced with surging overtime costs, city staff decided not to fill the spots with overtime. Instead, the Sunrise engine had to wait, as the city recruited and screened new firefighters.
As of Tuesday, Gilroy had hired two new recruits, and has offered jobs to two more, ensuring that the Sunrise engine can be staffed. The new hires have also nudged three current Gilroy firefighters to promotion: Cliff Colyer, Mike Botill and James Buessing will become Fire Engineers by early September.
“We’re ecstatic,” said fire union president Joshua Valverde, “and we’re looking forward to having not just three, but eventually four there … With the new hires, we’ll get back to almost-normal staffing. And we won’t be paying overtime on a daily basis.”
The news came as a pleasant surprise to northwest Gilroy residents – some of whom never knew the engine wasn’t operating.
“Oh, it hasn’t been?” asked Kara Uy, a Zuni Lane resident. “I had no idea.”
Foster stressed the exploding development in northwest Gilroy. With new homes springing up near Sunrise Drive, he said, firefighters will field more and more calls in the area. Over the next decade, another station is slated for southwest Gilroy, where nearly 1,700 homes are under construction by the Glen Loma Group.
“Sunrise is a fairly large response zone,” said Foster, “and we really need to have an engine in there.”
Chris Yacenda, who lives just south of the station on Benbow Drive, said he often hears the rescue rig rolling out on Sunrise Drive – sometimes too often for his liking – but was glad to hear the engine would go into effect.
“It’d be a good thing for this side of town,” he said, noting that the next closest station, Las Animas, is nearly two miles away. “Everyone here will welcome it – and we’ll put up with the dogs howling and barking as the sirens go by. It’s good to have it close to home.”
