KSHB 41 reporter Rachel Henderson covers neighborhoods in Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties. Share your story idea with Rachel.
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Fire Station 20 in Kansas City, Kansas' Muncie neighborhood re-opened Tuesday after an abrupt closure left residents concerned.
"We didn't have no notice whatsoever that they was going to abandon the fire station there," said Lloyd Martin, a longtime Muncie resident.
He's lived in KCK and across the street from the station since 1957, which is 10 years before the Station 20 was built.
"There's an awful lot of people out in here, and there's an awful lot of elderly people, and they use a lot of the EMT services there," Martin said.
Fire Station 20 typically houses three firefighters, a pumper fire truck and an extra cross-staffed ambulance.
KSHB 41's Rachel Henderson asked the Kansas City, Kansas, Fire Department about the abrupt closure, but they said no one could meet in person Tuesday.
Instead, they emailed a statement, which said Chief Dennis Rubin ordered crews to temporarily move out Jan. 9 because of wall cracks.
"They need to do something with the terrible shape," Martin said. "I have a grandson that's an EMT, and he works up here sometimes. He says the living conditions are just deplorable."
Around 1:00 p.m., KSHB 41’s Rachel Henderson saw Unified Government crews at Fire Station 20 there to inspect the station.
Two hours later, a spokesperson for the fire department shared that a structural engineer confirmed the building is safe, but the report won’t be available until the end of the week.
All personnel are scheduled to return "immediately."
"It would have been nice to at least get some input on it," Martin said. "I think they ought to inform the neighborhood or something before they just abruptly stop going."
Input — or lack thereof — is still an underlying issue.
KCKFD did not comment on its protocol for informing residents about closures.
It’s not the first time structural concerns about KCKFD stations have come up.
"It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out," said Bob Wing, the president emeritus of the International Association Firefighters Local 64, who KSHB 41’s Sarah Plake spoke with in 2019. "They’ve let it go on so long now that it is a major problem."
The report Wing showed Plake back in 2019 is almost 10 years old this year.
The state of the other fire stations is still up in the air, but for now, crews at Station 20 are back on the ground.
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