East Long Beach has been without Fire Engine 17 – at the cost of public safety in the area, critics say – for six years.

While the city’s Fire Department considers its restoration its “number one priority,” City Manager Pat West said during a Tuesday, March 5, City Council meeting that residents may have to wait a little longer for the revival to become a reality.

“We’re very positive right now that we are going to be bringing something shortly to the City Council for some type of structural funding” of the engine, West said. “We haven’t identified it yet.”

West said he was hopeful at the prospect of applying for a Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grant from FEMA, which he said Long Beach staff will do by the end of the month. West said he expects to learn whether the city is successful in obtaining that grant in a month or two.

“If successful, it will provide structural dollars for the equipment and also a certain amount of the employees,” West said. “It’s not structural in the sense that it’ll last forever, but it’ll certainly carry us forward for a year or two until we can help find other structural dollars for it.”

The engine was taken out of service in 2012 due to budget cuts. Fire union officials have noted that certain incidents, like a 2014 house fire across the street from the station, could have been contained much more quickly if the engine were still in service.

As the representative for the 4th District where the engine was located, City Councilman Daryl Supernaw has been a vocal advocate of restoring the engine for years. In the midst of the 2019 budget discussions, it seemed as if he would finally get his wish.

Although structural funding for restoring Fire Engine 17 was not included in the budget that the City Council ultimately passed, Mayor Robert Garcia identified the issue as a priority for city staff to address during the fiscal year. Supernaw’s City Council colleagues agreed on the issue’s urgency at the time.

West acknowledged those discussions in his comments during the Tuesday meeting. He said that city staff is aware the SAFER grant is not guaranteed, and his team is also working to find other, longer-term funding strategies.

“We’re also looking at other avenues in the budget — dealing with sales tax, property tax — where we could come to you with a structural plan to add this,” he said.

Councilwoman Suzie Price, who sits on the council’s Public Safety Committee where this issue was first heard, said the issue came before the council on Tuesday because of its importance to the city as a whole.

“Obviously, it’s very, very important to Councilman Supernaw, and he’s been a consistent advocate for this restoration, and I think we could not support him more if we tried,” Price said. “I look forward to seeing the staff’s recommendation of how we can make this restoration a reality in the very near future.”