TEXAS \u2014 More fire stations are popping up in parts of the state that once did not need as many.<\/p>\n
The latest is over in Bulverde, just north of San Antonio.<\/p>\n
The new fire station, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year, will help speed up response times.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Dixon, division chief of operations with Bulverde Spring Branch Fire Department, says that their goal is to get to folks who need them quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a total of 216, depending on where you draw the lines, might be 217 square miles,\u201d said Dixon.<\/p>\n
The area Dixon and his team cover is quickly changing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBulverde-Spring Branch is a mix of everything,\u201d said Dixon.<\/p>\n
Bulverde and Spring Branch have in more recent years become more suburban. There\u2019s a commercial district now mixed with people who have large ranches.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s a very diverse community, and it\u2019s becoming that it has a lot of needs. What worked for us 10 years ago is not going to work for us now or tomorrow,\u201d said Dixon.<\/p>\n
That adds to the need for more resources to keep call response times in check.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe average about 16 calls a day, which doesn\u2019t sound like a lot, but when they\u2019re spread out, sometimes it takes us 15 minutes. Our goal is to always be there within 10 minutes or less, but given some of the far ends of the neighborhood, the long windy roads, there are some places that just take us longer to get to,\u201d said Dixon.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why their new fire station, expected to be complete by the end of 2026, couldn\u2019t come at a better time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve always had a small station out there that\u2019s had an ambulance and a brush truck, and we\u2019ve had three personnel out there. We\u2019re going to be opening up a brand new station that will have bays, that will have a fire engine, a tender, water shuttles. It will still have an ambulance, and then we\u2019ll have a brush truck out there as well. So it will be a fully capable, fully functional fire station,\u201d said Dixon.<\/p>\n
Clay Avery is with the Texas State Association of Fire and Emergency Districts. It\u2019s a statewide group dedicated to improving fire protection in the Lone Star State.<\/p>\n
He said Bulverde isn\u2019t the only place exploding with growth and reevaluating the need.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe major population centers are expanding in a way that I\u2019m not sure anybody completely was anticipating. Even with the best anticipation, you\u2019re still going to have to execute strategies for keeping up with that growth,\u201d said Avery.<\/p>\n
That means Dixon and the rest of the firefighters will have to keep up with the constant changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re getting new roads that don\u2019t have names, and then we have old dirt roads that we never knew existed that we find on the way to a call,\u201d said Dixon.<\/p>\n
All to get to the community quicker.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause when people pick up the phone and call 911, they don\u2019t want to know that we\u2019re coming in 20 minutes. They want us there as soon as possible,\u201d said Dixon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 More fire stations are popping up in parts of the state that once did not need…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1061,132,1570,102,138,6716,223,1225,82,84,83,27,1569,835],"class_list":["post-389264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-app-public-safety","tag-austin","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-el-paso","tag-lauren-kendrick","tag-news","tag-public-safety","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}