Like many other city services, the Houston Fire Department has been strained recently by the massive growth we’ve seen in the city and greater Houston area. Now it looks like the department could be in desperate need of additional funding.
According to Marty Lancton, president of the Houston Professional Firefighters Association: “Fires continue to go up, the need for EMS and ambulances goes up, and we have to meet the demand. You can’t continue to do more with less.”
Lancton went on to say that this is something the city needs to get ahead of. “If you don’t add additional resources to the Houston Fire Department, there are going to be higher response times and no units available,” he warned.
According to Lancton, the city is going to need around 65 more ambulances for emergency medical services and a handful of new fire stations. The good news is, it doesn’t have to happen all at once. “Even if we added just 5 to 10 ambulances a year, over a period of time, that’s going to have a dramatic increase in the amount of availability we have,” he said.