Sept. 11 -- Orange County will close an aging Apopka-area fire station effective Oct. 1 as part of an arrangement with the city of Apopka, which has agreed to cover the fire-rescue emergency calls with crews from the city’s firehouses.
The deal between the county and its second-largest city is expected to be approved Tuesday by Orange County commissioners. The Apopka City Council gave its unanimous blessing last month.
Apopka, which has annexed nearly five square miles of the unincorporated area that the old fire station once covered, will receive more than $500,000 from the county next year to help defray the cost of the extra public-safety responsibilities.
Known as “Station 29,” the county firehouse opened in 1989 near Rock Springs Road and East Kelly Park Road.
Unlike many of Orange County’s new multimillion-dollar, state-of-the-art firehouses, Station 29 was a converted mobile home with a tall carport under which firefighters park the station’s lone fire engine and ambulance.
When it opened, the fire station had primary responsibility for providing fire protection and emergency medical service in an area of northwest Orange County spanning about 34 square miles, but nearly 25 square miles were located in Wekiwa Springs State Park and Rock Springs Run State Reserve.
Those conservation areas are uninhabited.
The station responded to 706 emergency calls last year — an average of less than two a day. Its service area includes 1,900 properties and about 4,200 people.
Apopka Fire Chief Chuck Carnesale said the agreement between the two governments should improve response times to most of the areas served by the soon-to-close station because Apopka fire stations are closer to the more populous neighborhoods.
“Apopka covering unincorporated fire and rescue services is nothing new,” Carnesale told the Apopka City Council last month. “We did it for about 80 years prior to the late 1980s.”
Orange County established its fire-rescue service in 1981.
Apopka has a fire station about four miles away — at 302 W. Welch Road — and its newest fire station, which opened Feb. 23, is near the Northwest Recreation Complex on Jason Dwelley Parkway, about three miles from Station 29.
The latter station provides emergency fire and medical response to several new neighborhoods, an elementary and middle school, plant nurseries and the northern portion of the Wekiva Parkway toll road.
It has a full-time staff of seven firefighters and houses a firetruck, ambulance and emergency squad.
Carnesale said the city will add a second firetruck and a second ambulance at that location as a result of the agreement with the county.
The change in fire-protection responsibility won’t change property-tax bills as the county tax levied for fire and emergency services will continue to be collected and a portion of the revenue transferred from Orange County to the city of Apopka.
Carrie Proudfit, a spokeswoman for Orange County Fire-Rescue, said none of the five firefighters at Station 29 will lose their jobs in the deal.
“Resources/personnel/equipment would be distributed throughout the county,” she said in a text.
She did not say where those resources would go.
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