From the Office of Brad Mitzelfelt
Supervisor, First District
San Bernardino County
SAN BERNARDINO – The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors today accepted the donation of 2.05 acres in Amboy to be used as a site for a new fire station.
“Getting fire stations built in remote desert areas where response times can exceed an hour has been a priority of mine since taking office,” said First District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt. “I want to thank the owner, Albert Okura, for his generous donation. This is a major step toward improving fire response times in a high-traffic, but underserved area.”
A fire station in Amboy would provide coverage on the heavily traveled Interstate 40 corridor, where there are no fire stations along the 150-mile stretch between Barstow and Needles. Response times in the Amboy area are a minimum of 1 hour 15 minutes. Fire crews that serve Amboy and I-40 must come from as far away as Wonder Valley, outside of Twentynine Palms, Needles, Harvard, just east of Barstow, and even Baker, approximately two hours away on Interstate 15.
A fire station in the Amboy area could provide emergency services to Amboy and along the I-40 corridor, which would shorten emergency response times by 30 to 45 minutes to such unincorporated communities as Ludlow, Cadiz, Bagdad and Essex. It would also allow Station 53 in Baker to serve as a back-up to the I-40 corridor so that the Baker emergency response crew would be free to cover the more heavily traveled Interstate 15 corridor.
Supervisor Mitzelfelt previously won a commitment from the Board of Supervisors that additional federal funding promised for the next few years from the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program would be set aside to build remote fire stations.