PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD)- The Peoria Fire Department will be speaking with City Council on Tuesday, November 7 to discuss reintegrating Rescue One.
Peoria Fire Chief, Shawn Sollberger, will be asking city officials for over a million dollars to staff the decommissioned Rescue One. The firefighters that will be tasked with running Rescue One will focus solely on retrieving victims and animals from fires, this allows the rest of the responders to put out the flames without having to worry about citizens.
Sollberger said the reintegration of the Rescue One will only help the fire department get better. “I believe in our firefighters. We have an incredibly good fire department. Our men and women of our fire department are highly educated, highly trained, and they provide a great service to this community. I want to continue that trend.”
The average amount of fires Peoria Fire Department responds to is 150 a year. Sollberger says that adding Rescue One back to the response team will help lower risk for his current firefighters. “How much risk do we have to take? How much risk do we have to put on our firefighters? They go on all the calls, and they fight the 10 to 15 fires within a month, every single month. That is a lot of fire.”
Sollberger says that he will run the Peoria Fire Department with whatever allowances he is given, however, the intention of Rescue One is to decrease risk for all firefighters and victims involved.
