Forgive the folks who live near Bloomingdale Avenue if they no longer flinch when they hear sirens.
With two fire stations 4 miles apart on Bloomingdale, the howl of engines racing to a fire is an all-too-familiar sound.
In a couple of weeks, those sirens are going to get a little louder.
A new $1.4-million fire station, replete with a fire engine, paramedic unit and 12 new firefighters, is set to open in mid August on Providence Road.
"This is getting to be a very busy area out here, and we are finding that another unit out here is really going to do us some good," said Hillsborough County Fire Rescue division chief Chip Branham.
The new station, Engine and Rescue No. 37, joins a cluster of fire and rescue stations in Riverview and Bloomingdale. In addition to the Gibsonton fire and rescue station on Gibsonton Drive and the Riverview fire station on U.S. 301, there are already two fire stations on Bloomingdale Avenue - a county station near John Moore Road, and a volunteer station east of Lithia-Pinecrest Road.
"With greater-alarm fires, any time you have a structure fire or a serious traffic accident, we run more than one unit on the call," Branham said. "This would be a second unit to respond into certain areas where, at this time, we have to rely on them coming from much farther away."
Bloomingdale Volunteer Fire Department Chief Jeffrey Hazzard said the new station will probably cut the number of his station's annual fire runs from about 1,200 to about 1,000.
The new station, located just north of Bloomingdale Avenue next to Providence Baptist Church, was originally set to open last December. Officials then set a date of July 4, but delays caused by inspections for county and fire code compliance have pushed the opening to August.
Branham said the county now expects to have the station up and running by Aug. 15.
"There's just a lot of little things that they've got to finish up," he said.
The station creates 12 new firefighting and rescue positions and is expected to cost $634,000 per year to operate.
Of greatest benefit to the community, Hazzard said, might be the new emergency response unit. Currently, the area's one advanced life support unit is stationed near Kingswood Elementary School on S Kings Avenue.
When the new unit moves in, the current one will move out to the Bloomingdale Volunteer Fire Department.
"That will reduce the response time for advanced life support up and down the Lithia-Pinecrest corridor to neighborhoods such as Lithia Ridge, River Hills, Twin Lakes, Brandon East and the eastern half of Bloomingdale," Hazzard said.
