State College is in that awkward stage of its life. The one in which it's not really a big city, but not really a little town anymore, either. As such, its fire service has come to an uncertain point as well.

Alpha Fire Co. has served the area faithfully for many years and is consistently mentioned as a model for the volunteer service that so many boroughs and communities use. The problem is with the evolution of the town the service is quickly becoming inadequate to serve the State College community.

These issues surfaced at a Borough Council work session April 1, at which the council discussed an evaluative study of Alpha Fire Co., including its staffing and leadership. Finance Department Director Mike Groff, who has been a member of Alpha Fire Co. for 40 years, said at the meeting that he wanted to see an active volunteer increase that might help some of the significant staffing problems.

In response to the report, which includes more than 100 recommendations to improve service, Groff used the recent fire on Aberdeen Lane as an example of the current problems within the department. Though there is a station with a functioning fire engine just several blocks away, no one was present at the station to fight the fire. And that's a scary thought in an area that becomes the third-largest city in Pennsylvania on football Saturdays, plus 40,000 undergraduate students and several thousand permanent residents. In a town that size, volunteer fire companies are no longer adequate.

The solution, then, is the gradual transition to a professional fire fighting staff, including the appointment of additional professional leadership immediately.
This undoubtedly would create a greater tax burden for local residents, but the alternative is a scary scenario of too many emergencies and an inadequate number of staff members to respond to the calls.

The influx of students creates this need, and Penn State should seek to help fund this professional staff. Though the framework for fire prevention at Penn State has been improved recently, the stories of dormitory fires at Seton Hall in New Jersey and other schools highlight the need for adequate fire service. Ultimately, Alpha should be commended for keeping itself as a volunteer company for this long because it most likely wouldn't have worked in another town this size. But Borough Council member Jeff Kern said it best, voicing a concern that certainly is a growing one.

"We've reached a point where we need to get rid of the fire fraternity and move into a more modern world," he said.

Here's to starting that process sooner, and avoiding a potential disaster, rather than later by responding to one.