TAMPA — Residents in New Tampa wait longer for firefighters and emergency personnel than almost anywhere else in Tampa, and council member Luis Viera says the city can no longer ignore it.
At a workshop last month, he pushed Tampa Fire Chief Barbara Tripp and her colleagues to do something about it.
According to the latest numbers, three of the city’s four slowest fire stations sit in the 33647 ZIP code, a community that has nearly tripled in the last 30 years and now grown to roughly 75,000 residents today, Viera said.
“This is something that really affects my district a lot,” he said. “The objective facts show there is a huge problem.”
New Tampa has four fire stations: No. 20 on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard in Tampa Palms, Nos. 21 and 22 located just a few miles from each other on Cross Creek Boulevard, and No. 23 on Trout Creek Lane just south of County Line Road.
According to the most recent response time numbers, Station 23 is 10 minutes, 38 seconds, the city’s slowest, while Station 21 (10:18) and Station 20 (10:02) are third and fourth.
The only other station in Tampa also higher than 10 minutes is No. 14 on South Church Ave., which ranks second-slowest in Tampa.
Station 20 in New Tampa has an average response time of 9:30, seventh slowest.
Much of the debate over response times centered on K-Bar Ranch, a sprawling, still-growing northeastern community that will one day have nearly 2,000 homes and is already difficult to reach in an emergency.
Although stations 21 and 22 are only a few miles away, emergency vehicles must travel Cross Creek Boulevard to Kinnan Street before entering K-Bar Ranch from its western edge. The community’s eastern side remains difficult to reach because K-Bar Ranch Parkway still doesn’t connect to Morris Bridge Road.
To fix that, the council had previously approved a “cut-through” road from Morris Bridge into the easternmost area in K-Bar Ranch back in 2024.
“What happened with that?” he asked Tripp, who wasn’t sure.
“The cut-through was approved a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago, and not a tree has been taken down,” said Nick Stocco, president of IAFF Local 754. “Public safety can’t wait a year to two before a plan is implemented, and not knowing the resource for an incomplete plan is an unjust decision.”
Tripp said other departments were likely responsible for completing the cut-through. She did agree it was the strongest solution to high response times in that area, along with the possibility of a portable first station for the area.
“I would say the first thing would be to try to get that cut through, because I would love to have a portable fire station,” she said, adding that she wasn’t saying that would suffice but it might be the easiest solution.
Tripp also said the department’s new dispatch software, implemented June 22, is expected to reduce dispatch times “and decrease the response time as well.”
Viera had called for the June 25 workshop to address response times, and was also still smarting from the decision by Tampa Fire Rescue’s decision to pull Truck 23, a specialty aerial truck, out of the area and reassign it to the Ybor City/Channelside district.
Tripp defended that move. She said Truck 23 had been underutilized in New Tampa — fewer than 100 calls a year, with stretches of 10 days without a single run — while downtown Tampa’s growing density and high-rise buildings needed the truck more.
“We do have another (aerial) truck within less than two miles from that,” she said, “so before that vehicle was moved, all of this data was analyzed to make sure that we were doing the appropriate move.”
Tripp also said that only one call, in 2024, was ever made from K-Bar Ranch requiring Truck 23’s services.
Viera ultimately pushed through a pair of motions. One directs Tampa’s mobility and real estate departments to appear July 30 with an update on the Morris Bridge cut-through. The second requires Tampa Fire Rescue to submit a written memo detailing which budget items, from additional units to a temporary station in K-Bar Ranch, would actually move the needle on response times.
“New Tampa is an area where we don’t hear from them a lot, but just because something isn’t heard from a lot doesn’t mean there’s not a problem,” Viera said.