As of January 1, 2019, Wichita Fire Department’s Engine 6 is off duty. It’ll sit at an east Wichita fire station shared between the city and Sedgwick County next to a city squad unit and a county fire engine.
“We don’t really know what the problem is. We’re not understanding why we have to take Engine 6 off track. The city’s not in a crunch. It’s not in a budget failure area,” Matt Schulte said.
Schulte is the president of IAFF 135, the city’s chapter of the firefighter union. The union was clear in its disdain for the city’s decision to pull Engine 6 on social media writing posts in a “countdown” format and urging neighbors in the area to write to their city council member or the mayor to advocate for Engine 6. But Wichita Fire Department’s Fire Marshal Stuart Bevis said the county fire engine and the city squad unit can handle the calls in that area just fine. He said there’s no other fire station in the city with two engines.
“Because of the call volume in that area, and we have a county engine already covering that area and covering both the county and city area due to our mutual aid agreement, that we would be pulling that engine out because we no longer have the funding for it,” Bevis said.
(Read more: KWCH News)