Fire department faces several additional funding needs in the coming year

Petersburg’s fire and emergency services department is heading into this spring’s borough budget planning cycle with several additional funding needs: a replacement of breathing equipment used by every firefighter entering a burning building, a forced relocation of the department’s training tower, and a push to update emergency plans that have gone largely untouched for more than a decade.

Fire and EMS Director Aaron Hankins laid out the challenges at last month’s Public Safety Advisory Board meeting, where he was joined by a contractor who reviewed the borough’s emergency planning documents....