FALMOUTH, Mass. — Falmouth Fire Chief Jeffrey Lewis told the Select Board on Friday that two of the town's six fire stations, including the West Falmouth station built in the 1930s, are not fit to serve as modern fire stations, and urged officials to focus on how many firefighters the town needs rather than how many buildings it has.

Lewis, who said he has been on the job about six months, spent hours walking the board through the Fire Rescue Department's staffing, stations and finances at an all-day budget workshop Oct. 30.

Station 4 in West Falmouth is "fundamentally unfit for purpose," Lewis said. "There is no realistic way to preserve that structure," he told the board, describing a single bathroom, stairs that are not entirely safe and an engine bay with only inches of clearance. He said the lot is too small to rebuild on without problems. Station 3 in North Falmouth has architectural issues that make it unfit "as a modern fire station," he said, adding that crews put carpet up when backing trucks in to keep from damaging the building and the apparatus.

Only Station 6, built in 2024, is fully modern, Lewis said, and Stations 1 through 5 "require very substantial work."

'Presence of a building'

Lewis said that when the department cannot fill shifts, it moves crews around the town rather than closing stations. If daily staffing falls to 14 people, he said, the department runs without personnel at Station 4.

"We don't ever close any stations," he said. "Simply the presence of a building does not impart safety to any part of the community. It's the presence of the personnel."

He said the department's goal is to staff 20 people a day, with promotions and new hires from the last union contract helping to raise the daily minimum. With too few firefighters, he said, crews often cannot follow the standard of having two firefighters outside a burning building ready to rescue the two who go in during the first minutes of a fire.

Residents worried

Select Board member Elizabeth Klein said residents in West and North Falmouth "do feel very worried about not being able to have help come in a timely manner." At the end of the meeting, Klein said she lives in the neighborhood of residents "who, you know, are very worried about the future of their fire station," and that they ask her every day, "Are we going to be safe? Is there gonna be help when I need it?"

Lewis said he hears those concerns and went to Station 4 over the summer when crews had to be moved away from it.

Select Board member Douglas Brown said he had pushed to drop a proposed combined station from the town's capital plan because the town needed to make the existing building "at least minimally safe for habitation" and could not afford a new station now. Lewis said that even with repairs the building would not work as a fire station. "It'll probably make a great apartment someday or a teardown and build a new station on that site if that's what the study shows," Brown said.

Lewis said he could not say whether six stations, or their current locations, are right, and called for an outside study of the department. Town Manager Mike Renshaw said about $60,000 in previously approved money had been set aside for an organizational study of the department, but that a full review of station locations would likely cost more.

Veterans office change draws complaints

Earlier in the workshop, which covered the town's budget outlook, Select Board member Robert Mascali said the town had "received a lot of blowback from a lot of people" after Renshaw filled the veterans office's full-time administrative assistant job on a part-time basis as a trial. Renshaw said about six residents had come by over the past couple of months about longer waits to see the town's veterans agent, and said officials would take a closer look at the change. Brown urged the town to restore the full-time job.