TREASURE ISLAND, Fla. \u2014 The city of Treasure Island has secured $2.5 million from the state for a new public safety facility, after Hurricane Helene destroyed the building that housed the city\u2019s fire rescue and police departments in 2024.<\/p>\n
Treasure Island Fire Rescue is temporarily working out of portable trailers. Officials say the former fire and police building, which was built in 1957, took on about 3 feet of water during Helene.<\/p>\n
Mercedes Nelson-Palmer, a fire and life safety educator, has worked with Treasure Island Fire Rescue for five years.<\/p>\n
“It’s been unique to try to make something your home again,\u201d Nelson-Palmer said. \u201cEspecially in a fire department where this is our second home \u2014 mostly to our fire crew that had their boots on the ground.”<\/p>\n
Parts of the former facility remain as they were left after the storm, with paperwork and furniture scattered inside.<\/p>\n
“This was my office before the storms,\u201d Fire Chief Trip Barrs said. \u201cThe water just came in at this level, and basically cartwheeled a lot of furniture, flooded out the filing cabinets and all that. So, total loss.”<\/p>\n
The $2.5 million in state funding comes on top of last year\u2019s $1.5 million in state appropriations for the project.<\/p>\n
Barrs said the new facility will be slightly larger than the former building, with space laid out more efficiently for shared uses.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to share some space, like fitness equipment rooms and office or storage,\u201d Barrs said.<\/p>\n
The new facility will be built just down the street from the current site. Barrs said state law requires the new building to meet Category 5 hurricane specifications, which will require a sturdier foundation, larger walls, and other upgrades.<\/p>\n
The current plan calls for fire truck bays on the first floor, the fire station on the second floor, and the Treasure Island Police Department on the third floor.<\/p>\n
“It’ll give our firefighters and police officers a resilient, stable place to work from,\u201d Barrs said.<\/p>\n
Members of the Treasure Island community also said the new facility is important for the city.<\/p>\n
“It’s pretty dire, especially for a small community like this,\u201d said Andrew Cook, a bartender at Britt\u2019s Pizza.<\/p>\n
For Nelson-Palmer, it would be a new place for her and her colleagues to call home.<\/p>\n
“It’d be wonderful to have a new building,\u201d she said. \u201cWe’d be able to do community education in there a little bit more. We’d be able to bring the public through that a little bit more.”<\/p>\n
The new facility is in the design phase. Once the design is finished, it will be shared with the City Commission and the public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TREASURE ISLAND, Fla. \u2014 The city of Treasure Island has secured $2.5 million from the state for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[2967,274,28,115,596,277,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,1374],"class_list":["post-340710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-florida","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-public-safety","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-tyler-oneill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}