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The Beltsville and Calverton areas will continue to have two fire stations assisting residents, thanks to an agreement between the stations and Prince George's County.

County Fire Chief Eugene A. Jones announced July 27 that he would eliminate fire and emergency medical services at Calverton Station No. 841 in an effort to cut the department's budget. The station's hazardous materials support unit would have remained open.

Worried that local coverage would suffer, Beltsville Fire/EMS Station No. 831 — which shares a fire chief and some of its personnel with Calverton — elected to juggle its staffing schedule to keep the nearby station running.

"Basically, the county approached us and they only wanted to staff one station," said Al Schwartz, fire chief at both stations. "In our view, both stations should be staffed with the area that we cover."

The Beltsville station — which has long had more volunteers than its Calverton counterpart — will now rely more heavily on its volunteers and re-assign two of its career firefighter positions to the Calverton station. Jones praised the firefighters for their effort.

"A large part of our organization – 90-some percent – is unionized, so recruitment of volunteers is not very high on the list," he said at a July 30 meeting with officials from Berwyn Heights, College Park, Greenbelt and New Carrollton. "[But] volunteerism is very important ... we need every bit of help that we can get."

The county will proceed in eliminating fire service at Chillum Fire/EMS Station No. 844 and removing career firefighters from stations in Capitol Heights and Riverdale.

Jones has stressed that the closures and re-assignments will not hurt service but will instead streamline a department that has already has too many stations.

"We have 22 stations within a mile and a half of each other," he said. "We don't have enough personnel to staff those fire stations."

Jones said that by combining resources at nearby understaffed stations, service will improve despite the perception of some residents.

"When people look at it, they see a fire station that's empty. But they don't see the actual operations," Jones said. "If you have [two understaffed stations] it would be better to put all of those firefighters into one fire station."

The Beltsville and Calverton stations began their new staffing plan Sunday and received about 15 combined calls, all of which were fully staffed with at least two respondents in an ambulance or three on a fire engine, Schwartz said.

"It's too early to tell," he said, "but hopefully [residents] won't notice the difference."