Police, fire and emergency-response groups ask county to rethink its plan to locate morgue at fire-training site
By David O’connor
Lancaster New Era (Pennsylvania)
Copyright 2006 Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.
Lancaster, PA They waited and waited for their new “home,” and gratefully watched it get built.
And now, two years after moving in, they can picture the additions it could use to make it even better.
But instead, they’re being asked to make do with less space, not more, and share their facility with the Lancaster County morgue.
So the top officers from three emergency-response groups here - police, fire and emergency medical services - are officially asking county officials to re-think their plan to relocate the morgue to the county’s training center, along Route 283 in East Hempfield Township.
“Please, do not shortchange the public safety providers (who) handle the county’s crises on a daily basis,” states a letter from one group, the county Emergency Medical Services Council.
“We’ve waited a long time for the facility that we have, and would like to see it expand, not contract. Please re-think the location” for the morgue, it adds.
And the top boards of the county fire and police chiefs associations, in new letters to the county commissioners, agree that they are “running out of room” at the current training site, which opened in 2004, and don’t want the morgue there, too.
County leaders, after months of rumors, had announced in July they intend to build the new $3.5 million forensic center and morgue at the East Hempfield training center by 2008.
The current morgue, in the basement of the Conestoga View building, is outdated and too small, county coroner Dr. Gary Kirchner and other officials have said.
But the county fire chiefs, while saying they appreciate how the commissioners “had the foresight to build a training center for all the emergency services here,” emphasize that there’s no land left to expand or for classrooms, storage and parking.
The new center “allowed us to finally see a state-of-the-art training facility come to life, but not without some compromises up front on the part of the emergency service providers,” states the fire chiefs’ letter, signed by its president, John Leas.
“We have a genuine concern for future growth capabilities as things stand now, and with the addition of the county morgue ... these concerns grow even greater,” it adds.
“Contrary to us being told, ‘This will have no effect on the operation of emergency vehicle training,’ we must ask, ‘Why will the police be unable to accomplish high-speed pursuit training, and why must barriers be built in front of the morgue?’”
The police chiefs’ group is “shocked that this is being proposed,” its own letter says.
The county commissioners had been considering moving the morgue to the Sunnyside peninsula, but dropped that plan early this year.
The county wants to hire an architect soon to begin designing the facility so construction can begin in spring.
Meanwhile, the county Fireman’s Association also is on record as opposing moving the morgue to the training facility.
The nearly $13 million center includes a burn building and motorcycle safety course and is used by more than 100 police, fire and EMS units, both from the county and outside.