LEHIGH ACRES, Fla. — In October, construction crews started to build the seventh fire station for Lehigh Acres Fire Control and Rescue Distrcit. As the population grows, the district said this is how they effectively continue to serve the community.
Katie Heck works with Lehigh Acres Fire Control and Rescue District. She said, "We're excited because this station just adds to the layers of service we can provide for this community. It's rapidly growing, and we are doing our best to keep up with that growth."
The new station not only addresses population growth in Lehigh, but also the response time, like in a situation last December when Fox 4 met with Heck. Then, crews got called to two brush fires in Lehigh 25 minutes a part.
Fire Chief Robert DiLallo gave Fox 4 a tour of the station under construction. He said, they chose this location based on the call volume they see.
"We do that by heat maps, so it shows us where the hottest areas are, and this was the next location we had for a fire station," Chief DiLallo said
Currently, Lehigh Acres only has six active stations in its 142 square miles of coverage when LAFCRD said it should have between 19 and 23 stations.
Chief DiLallo said, "We kind of use it as a comparison to Cape Coral. Cape Coral is at 120, and I believe they're working out of 13 fire stations, so we are way behind that, but we are having massive growth in population out here."
To keep up with the growth, they say their budget includes building a new station every three years.
"The more people we have moving here the more need we have for fire stations," Chief Dilallo said.
They said the location for next station depends on how and where the growth continues.
