CLEVELAND --
When fire crews respond to a fire, minutes and even seconds can count, but could efforts to save money be hampering that in Cleveland?
On Wednesday, it should have taken firefighters with the appropriate equipment four minutes of less to get to the scene of an arson fire in Tremont. Instead, it took twice as long, reported NewsChannel5's Curtis Jackson.
"Just watching the flames get bigger and bigger and the house and the tress just burning and burning and just imagine all my stuff in there just going up in smoke," said fire victim Carla Davis.
Davis and her family waited over eight minutes before firefighters started battling the blaze that destroyed everything they owned, even though the closed firefighters could have been there in half the time.
"There was another fire station nearby with a bigger truck with water already on it and they could have been here in half the time and maybe I wouldn't have lost so much," said Davis.
The station closest to the fire was temporality closed. It's a cost-saving measure the city of Cleveland calls a brownout.
Because the station was shut down, the first firefighters at the scene of the blaze didn't have any water to put out the flames.
"We can't do anything without water. Water's one of the most important thing we do when we get there. It helps us do our rescues, assists with ventilation so it's essential we have water on the scene as soon as possible," said Cleveland Firefighter's Union President Chester Ashton.
Ashton blames the brownout on the city trying to run 41 firehouses on a budget for only 40.
"To us this is absolutely, totally unacceptable," he said. "It just boggles my mind how you can run 41 units and have only a budget of 40 units. You start $1.2 to $1.5 million in the whole anyway. I don't see how you can run a division that way."
Firefighters said the city has the money to keep all 41 stations open at all times, but the city disagrees.
National standards require firefighters to be on the scene of a blaze and ready to fight the fire in eight minutes.
According to records provided by firefighters, the response time on Wednesday was anywhere from eight and a half to nine minutes, including the time it took to get water to the blaze.
The city's public safety director did not return calls for comment on the response time.
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