By WALTER F. NAEDELE
Philadelphia Inquirer
An advisory committee of Bucks County fire officials recommended yesterday that the county commissioners consider building a firefighter training facility at the U.S. Steel complex in Falls Township.
Robert Hedden, former chief of the Falls Township Fire Company, told the commissioners at their monthly meeting that his committee would spend the next year to 18 months looking for state and federal money for the project.
Only then will the commissioners decide whether to approve construction.
In an interview after the meeting, Hedden said that U.S. Steel would donate about 20 acres as part of the site’s designation as a tax-free Keystone Opportunity Improvement Zone.
There has long been “a need for a fire school in Lower Bucks,” Hedden told the commissioners.
He reminded them that the current school at Neshaminy Manor, the county government complex in Doylestown Township, is an hour’s drive for companies in such places as Langhorne and Levittown.
“Our commitment to that remains strong,” Commissioner James F. Cawley said of the Doylestown school.
But Hedden noted, “It’s inconvenient for companies to travel up there” for training.
Firefighters constituted a large part of the audience, as the commissioners met at the Newportville Fire Company in Bristol Township.
Hedden, as head of the advisory committee formed in October 2003, presented a 30-page report.
“Lower Bucks, with the bulk of the population and the heaviest fire load, was deserving of a localized fire training delivery system,” the report stated.
The Doylestown site, according to the report, is “taking firefighters and apparatus out of the Lower Bucks communities, thereby weakening the fire service delivery system” during training hours.