The Joppa-Magnolia Volunteer Fire Company has begun a fund-raising campaign, dubbed Fund the Fort, to raise $5 million to upgrade and expand its firehouse on Hanson Road in Edgewood.
The campaign should be supported by the Edgewood community and beyond. Fort Hanson, as the station is called by the fire company, is one of the busiest in Harford County. It serves the west side of Edgewood and the east side of Joppatowne and is first call for I-95 between Route 24 and the Baltimore County line.
Not only is this territory large and densely populated, we don't have to remind our readers of the number of accidents and other incidents that occur daily along the western end of I-95 in the county, or of the number of crime-related medical calls in the neighborhoods that surround the firehouse, not to mention several industrial/warehousing operations nearby.
Fort Hanson is staffed 24 hours, seven days a week. All the Joppa-Magnolia fire personnel are volunteers, as are all the EMS personnel assigned to Fort Hanson. These volunteers are known for their quick response to calls both within their territory and often beyond when mutual aid is requested.
The firehouse is 26 years old and was built as a substation, not the primary facility into which it has evolved over the past quarter century. Just think of how many lives have been saved by fire and EMS personnel based at Fort Hanson. We believe it's a staggering number.
The Fund the Fort campaign is a bow to reality. Although fire company officials say Harford County taxpayers will provide approximately $700,000 toward the planned 5,000-square-foot addition and upgrades to the existing buildings, most of the cost will come from citizen and business donations.
The county government, while continuing to rely on private, volunteer organizations for firefighting and a majority of local emergency medical services, is not funding the majority of the cost of bricks and mortar facilities for those organizations. Harford County Executive Barry Glassman has said firehouse construction, which would require the county to borrow through bond sales, is not feasible when the county is trying to reduce its total indebtedness.
The Fund the Fort campaign has human faces: Karen Nicholson, who lives in the neighborhood, and other family members are spearheading the effort to help repay the kindness the Joppa-Magnolia members at the station showed toward her son, Nathaniel, now 7, who was diagnosed with leukemia more than three years ago and was adopted by the folks at Fort Hanson, who spent many hours with him as he battled the disease and is now free of it.
"These guys and gals are very near and dear to us," Karen Nicholson said during the Oct. 10 kickoff of the Fund the Fort campaign. "If I can help them, if I can help the community, then that's what I want to do."
We urge everyone in our community to follow her lead and help Fund the Fort.