Residents against the closure of Fire Station No. 79 in Hampstead We, the undersigned residents of Hampstead, protest the unjustified closing of Hampstead\'s only fire station. Following the forced merger we lost control of our fire station and Montreal did not spend the money necessary to maintain it. Now it is in such bad shape that it must be rebuilt. Since the station was closed in April of 2007, response time to fire calls that used to be handled by station 79 has increased by almost 1 minute. A fire doubles in size every minute. In addition, station 79 had two trucks equipped to handle First Responder calls. Now we have only one truck servicing us from station 78 in Cote Saint Luc. The single truck is often on fire calls or replacing another truck at another station so we often have no First Responder service. This is unacceptable and we urge you to rebuild and reopen station 79 in Hampstead.