The Burnsville Breakfast Rotary Club held their meeting today at the “new” Burnsville Fire Station #1 located at 14275 Newton Ave. The planning for this facility started in 2015 and was a collaborative effort between the firefighters, captains, chiefs, architects & construction managers. The new station sits on 4 ½ acres and is just south of Cty. Road 42, and West of Hwy. 5 (behind Caribou Coffee Drive Through) which provides easy access to these major roads and is an area that doesn’t impact neighborhoods from a noise or traffic congestion standpoint. The station has a very welcoming façade and has a dedicated public entrance and parking area which was lacking in the old facility for visitors.
The new fire station was built with the physical health & mental wellness of the firefighters and paramedic personnel in mind. To help these individuals process some of the tragic events they’re exposed to from fire deaths to vehicle extractions after an accident, the station has a full-time psychiatrist on duty to help them process these experiences and promote emotional wellness. The facility also provides rest & relaxation areas, a full kitchen, workout room, individual bedrooms, and many other amenities to help them make their on-duty time restful & relaxing between calls. The station fields over 8,000 calls per year with the majority of them being medical-related as the population of Burnsville ages. The typical response time is about 6 minutes from the time the call comes in to arrival at the specified location. Firefighters work 24 hours on/48 hours off shift and spend 1/3 of their life at the station.
Burnsville is one of only a handful of cities in Minnesota that employs full-time firefighters & paramedics/ambulance services to its city, as 93% of the cities across the state are a volunteer-only model. This gives the residents of Burnsville a huge advantage of getting very quick response times due to a fire or medical emergency where sometimes seconds can mean the difference between life & death. The station will be holding an open house on Saturday, May 7th. from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. This would be a great opportunity to see this magnificent facility and get a feel for all the hard work and planning it took to make this facility a reality!
