Sunshine Summit Fire Station Supports Volunteer Fire Crews

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published March 18, 2011 at 12:43 PM PDT

This story was published more than 13 years ago.

The County will open a refurbished fire station on Sunshine Summit on Saturday.

The station, which is staffed entirely by volunteers, is north of Warner Springs.

Supervisor Bill Horn said it will have secure storage for equipment, and sleeping and day accommodation for the volunteers.

Become a KPBS sponsor

"What we try to do is leave at least two people on duty all the time," he said. "So when they do get the call, they get the station ready and the equipment ready. It helps us improve our response times."

Horn says the nearest fire station staffed with professional, full-time fire crews is about 30 minutes away.

He said when he had an accident near Borrego Springs some years ago, volunteer firefighters were some of the first to arrive.

San Diego County spent half-a-million dollars on the fire station. The money came from the $15 million a year the supervisors earmark for fire protection in the back country.

San Diego depends on volunteer fire crews more than most other large California counties to supplement fire protection provided by CalFire.

Alison St John

twitter

Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.