San Antonio Valley, South Sonoma County, Petaluma, California

"Semi Homeless"

San Antonio Fire had a nice new three bay station of metal construction, located on the rock quarry property owned by Dutra Materials. There we kept 4 of our 6 vehicles. At the begining of 2006, the property was sold for a 300+ residential development to be annexed into the city. Because of this we had to dismantle our building and move everything. It is now being stored.

Dutra Materials has generously offered to allow us to reassemble our station at their new location once the Environmental Impact Report is approved. The new location will be at the extreme south end of Petaluma boulevard South.

In the meantime Shamrock Materials came to the rescue and allowed us to use two bays of their three bay shop at the Sand Depot on Petaluma Boulevard South. This allowed us to keep our Rescue 9536 and our Type 1 9581 inside and at a location giving acceptable response time.

Our water tender, 9596, was given space by a more than kind neighbor of it's driver and our type 3, 9567, was parked at our Captain Mattei's property. Since our other type 3, 9568, is kept on the Reich Ranch and our utility, 9540, at the Glenn Ranch, everything had a safe home for the time being.

To say this is without impact is stretching the fact. The building dismantling was expensive, moving was costly, reassembly will be even worse. We had hoped for some financial help from the developer but that did not materialize. Things are cramped and storage is in a barn 4 miles away. Not having the TV and a place to just "hang" has taken it's toll on the "knit" of our "fire family". The community has been supportive and not just with apparatus parking space. Our neighboring fire departments have offered the use of their training areas as needed. Councilwoman Pamela Torliatt (now Mayor) even called to "make sure we were ok".

In essence, I guess you can say we have 5 stations. It will be very nice though, to get back to 3.