Fire stations provide safe place for those in distress

Fire stations in the city of Spokane are participating in a regionwide effort to provide safe houses for people in emergencies.

The Safe Place program was formed through the Volunteers of America organization so that children would have locations to go to get help quickly.

Spokane’s 14 fire stations are staffed 24 hours a day, making them likely locations for people facing domestic violence, threats or other problems.

“It’s always been a safe place for people to go,” said Lt. Greg Borg at Fire Station No. 3 at West Indiana Avenue and North Ash Street.

“Usually we are either here or will be back right away,” he said.

The front doors to the living quarters of all city stations have red call boxes with push buttons that will connect someone in need of help with a fire dispatcher. The dispatcher can summon police and medical help immediately, Borg said.

Additionally, fire stations all have trained medics and extensive first-aid equipment to treat someone who shows up injured.

The Safe Place program also includes businesses and law enforcement offices. Safe Place locations display a distinctive yellow-and-black diamond-shaped Safe Place sign. The program also gets children in touch with community resources they might need.

Karen Kearney, who helped organize the Safe Place program at Spokane fire stations, said businesses and residents in Hillyard recognized the need to create “safe haven” locations for crime victims and children three years ago. Kearney chaired an organization known as Under One Roof that helped organize the safe haven locations.

Kearney said she learned that children frequently suffer physical or sexual abuse in homes where their mothers are abused.

But problems of violence and abuse are not confined to northeast Spokane. They are in every neighborhood, said Borg, president of the firefighters’ union in Spokane.

He said that firefighters occasionally have children show up at the station whose parents failed to come home in the evening. In addition, parents in crisis should consider fire stations as one of the places they can go for help without having to answer a lot of questions, he said.