HIDDEN SPRINGS, Idaho — The fire station in Hidden Springs is one of the first things people can see when they drive into the small community, but the station has sat empty for years, aside from a single fire truck parked inside.
This leaves residents waiting for fire crews to drive into the Boise Foothills from places like Boise, Garden City, and Eagle.
The longer response times adds minutes to how long emergencies go unanswered, which could be the difference of saving a home being saved and losing everything.
For the idle fire station, it all comes down to funding - or the lack of it.
When Hidden Springs was first being developed in the late 1990s, the fire station was donated by the developers to North Ada Fire and Rescue. While this community continues to grow, it doesn't mean there's enough funding to have a full-time staff to operate the fire station.
"Not enough tax base in Hidden Springs to provide 3 firefighters, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Boise Fire Chief Dennis Doan said.
The town manager, Lisa Ahrens, says that not all of the 2,200 people that live there may know it's empty.
"So when you drive by it it's there and you see a firetruck in there so you think it's staffed but it's not so that kind of maybe it's misleading," Ahrens said.
Without a nearby operational fire station nearby, Hidden Springs residents can wait nearly twice as long for fire crews to arrive than people living within city limits.
"In the city, we can respond anywhere in our community within four and five minutes," Doan said.
Add about five minutes onto that for an emergency in Hidden Springs.
"We want to provide better fire protection up there, but it's the tax base up there," he said.
The issue comes down to the lack of a tax base. Not enough people live in the North Ada Fire Protection District to fund more than one fire station. That leaves the area to contract out to the Boise Fire Department for protection.
Another problem, according to Doan, is leapfrog development.
"When you leapfrog clear out to Hidden Springs, none of that is in the city of Boise so of course the Boise taxpayers aren't going to pay for their firefighters to be out there," the chief said. "The North Ada County Fire Protection District needs to have the funds to protect that area and there just isn't."
The one Boise Fire Station that serves the community? It's located in Garden City, according to Doan.
"Their response times are anywhere from eight to 11-12 minutes," Ahrens said.
It took fire crews ten minutes to get to the house fire that happened on Saturday night.
At one point, the Hidden Springs fire station was staffed by volunteers. Doan said those volunteers quit after there were so few emergencies in the area.
The only way to get this lone fire station fully staffed is to get more funding than what the community can provide, which means the community needs to grow and develop more.
"Our residents do love the small town feel," Ahrens said. "No one likes the downside of development but I do think they would welcome it being staffed."