By John Donegan for Long Beach Post
Originally published on August 31, 2026
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It could soon take crews more than a minute longer to respond to structure fires in neighborhoods around the Colorado Lagoon. That’s the topline conclusion in a city memo outlining the consequences of removing the fire engine from Station 14, which sits right next to the lagoon on Colorado Street.
The area’s City Council member and the firefighters union are already using that conclusion as ammunition to campaign against the cut, which the mayor and city manager argue is necessary to help close a $58 million deficit.
They’re hoping to ease the blow by moving a paramedic ambulance into the station to replace Engine 14 — which mostly responds to medical calls anyway. But because that ambulance is already stretched thin with 12-13 calls per shift, it’s still going to take it almost a minute longer on average to arrive at medical calls than Engine 14 would, according to the Fire Department’s projection.
The new memo also underscores that the burden of a single engine closure rarely stays contained to one neighborhood.
When engines from nearby stations 4, 8 and 22 are pulled to cover calls in Engine 14’s former district, those stations in turn draw coverage from engines as far away as stations 17, 10, 2 and 5. With the department’s remaining engines already responding to more than 15 calls per 24-hour shift, officials said they are also considering removing lower-priority calls from dispatch protocols altogether — a step the memo characterizes bluntly as a systemwide service reduction, separate from the effects of losing Engine 14.
Along with proposed cuts to libraries, shaving from the Fire Department’s budget may be the most politically fraught move the city is pursuing to close its budget gap.
Councilmember Kristina Duggan has asked for possible alternative funding sources for the fire station, warning that losing Engine 14 would have citywide consequences.
Fire Chief Dennis Buchanan has said he does not want to make the cuts but understands the city’s financial constraints, and Mayor Rex Richardson has floated using port funding to restore other Fire Department positions and eliminate a rotating engine closure elsewhere in the budget, even as he has defended the broader package of reductions as necessary.
“We know that budgets are cyclical,” Richardson said, adding that recent mayors and councils have each had to make similar calls in lean years.