Closure of the Los Palacios Fire Station Due to Lack of Personnel

The Los Palacios and Villafranca fire station has closed this Saturday after one of the two on-duty personnel was absent. The Town Hall is negotiating its integration into the provincial Consortium to avoid these closures.

The Los Palacios and Villafranca fire station has been closed since Saturday morning after one of the two on-duty personnel had to go to hospital, resulting in a work absence. With only one firefighter available, the professionals consider it impossible to guarantee a safe and effective response to any emergency. The situation, reported for weeks by the firefighters to the Town Hall, has led to the temporary closure of the service.

The Councillor for Citizen Security, José Manuel Triguero, has acknowledged that negotiations to integrate the local station into the Provincial Fire Consortium of the Diputación are progressing slowly. "We were told last year that by the end of the year, and at the beginning of this year that before summer, and now we are told that before the end of the year," lamented Triguero. The integration would allow for a pool of 200 personnel instead of the current 16.

Of those 16 firefighters, the staff is divided into five teams, so it is usual for only two colleagues to be on duty to serve a population of over 40,000 inhabitants and provide coverage to nearby municipalities. "It cannot be that we have had the same number of personnel for the last 14 years," the firefighters complain. The mayor, Juan Manuel Valle, has demanded that the Consortium ensure at least six firefighters per shift, as is the case in La Rinconada, a town of similar population.

Meanwhile, firefighters from Utrera, activated due to the closure of the Los Palacios station, are intervening in a vegetation fire near the hamlet of Chapatales. The professionals from Los Palacios insist that they "deeply regret having reached this point" and ask for understanding from the public, who in recent weeks have suffered several intentional fires, such as the one that devastated the wetland of Cerro de las Cigüeñas.

The closure of the station has been communicated to the provincial command to take the necessary measures to restore the service. The Town Hall hopes that the integration into the Consortium will be finalized before the end of the year, although the firefighters express skepticism after repeated delays. Meanwhile, the fire extinguishing service in Los Palacios and Villafranca is in the hands of neighbouring stations, which prolongs response times.