As he arrived at Fire Station 13 in Tampa to spend 12 hours shadowing some of Tampa's firefighters, Luis Viera kept his reasoning simple: "I’m looking in this city’s budget for some robust and significant help for this fire station," he said.
The Tampa city councilman has been working for more than a year to ease the stress on the crews of Fire Station 13 – the city's busiest – a location plagued by nearly never-ending calls for service. "They have about 10,000 calls a year. You do the math, that’s about 30 calls a day," Viera explained. "The nickname of this fire station is ‘Nightmare on Annie Street,’ because they say if you work here, you’re not going to sleep."
Thursday, Viera is pulling a 12-hour shift at the station to raise awareness of the need for additional resources.