Notes From My Knapsack 8-17-17

Notes From My Knapsack 8-17-17

Jeff Gill

 

Other ideas for the fire station

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Apparently there is some interest in moving our current fire station from its charming location on N. Prospect St.

 

In one way or another, change is gonna come (as the song says), since the current facility is greatly in need of significant upgrade. So the one constructive piece of counsel I have for township and village residents and officials is that this isn't about "stay" or "go" but where the fire service should "be" in the near future. It will, beyond doubt, be in a new facility not too many years hence. Will that new facility be on the current footprint, or in some new location entirely: that's the question.

 

One proposed location has some controversy about traffic and watercourses and emergency preparedness already around it. But I started wondering, sitting on my porch perhaps sitting a little too close to the citronella candle, about other options we might have for our proud and historic fire fighters to operate out of.

 

It occurred to me that across the street, the hill of which Prospect is named (some call it all College Hill now, but historically the eastern promontory was Prospect Hill and the western, where the academic quad is, was the part labeled College Hill), offers an interesting alternative.

 

Tunnels could be bored into Prospect Hill, and spring loaded ejection systems could launch fully prepared crews off into a system of ramps and overshoots to miss the traffic lights on Broadway. My son had a toy car set which worked rather well with fire trucks launched out of a mountainside, and the excitement can be mitigated with safety harnesses and such, I'm sure. An underground lair with a pole connecting two levels is always a popular bas of operations for most important rapid response units on television and in the movies, so there must be plans out there to build them.

 

Likewise, SHIELD has helicarrier technology which allows a platform to hover over an area, with some ability to move the entire HQ from one location to another. A helicarrier fire station with four large turbofan lift units could generally operate over the backstreet parking area behind the current station, and with minimal damage to trees and satellite dishes be moved wholesale to one end of the village or another, lowering the units on repellor platforms.  When I was younger, I could have sworn SHIELD had refueling craft to supply the helicarrier, but in today's movies it seems to be a mix between Stark Industries arc reactors and solar panels.

 

Either way, if it's good enough for Nick Fury, it should be good enough for our fire crews.

 

Competition also could create some interesting benefits: what about two smaller stations at either far end of the village, and they race to see which crew arrives first, getting a bonus for their speed (losing points for hitting any cars or pedestrians along the way).

 

Those are some of my thoughts about fire station location; I may need to get a new citronella candle, too.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he likes his front porch. Maybe too much. Tell him where you think the fire station should be at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.