Alcudia will have fire station to cover north of island

ANTONI Pascual, head of the Council of Majorca's public works deparment, visited Alcudia yesterday and promised to build a permanent fire station, providing the town council finds suitable land. It will be the first permanent fire station in the north of the island, which currently has to rely on the Inca fire brigade or the auxiliary fire station at Can Picafort. In announcing plans, Pascual said that it was “an historical debt.” He added that he did not understand how Alcudia was left out when the distribution of the Majorcan fire brigades was being designed, because it was the “ideal” place. Not only Alcudia, but also Pollensa, Sa Pobla and Muro depend on the fire stations at Inca and Can Picafort, which is insufficient, given the number of hotels, the amount of woodland and the commercial port in the north, Mayor of Alcudia Miquel Ferrer said. Joan Cerdà, the Mayor of Pollensa, also praised the initiative. He added that last week, there had been a fire in his municipality and the firemen had to come from Inca and Can Picafort “and although they arrived quickly, it is not the same.! Onofre Plomer, the deputy Mayor of Muro, said that efforts to obtain a fire station for the north failed a few years ago, and the announcement by Pascual was welcome. He added that if the Alcudia council could not find the land, his council would be willing to provide it. However, the Alcudia council has accepted the challenge of finding a suitable site, which could possibly be in the future industrial estate.
Pascual said it was important for it to have good communications. He added that if the council finds the land before the end of the year, the project will be included in the budget and work could start within a year. A few months ago, the Balearic Port Authority and the Council of Majorca launched a master plan for emergencies in case of accidents at the island ports. Pascual also announced that the Council of Majorca will spend more than five million euros in improving road accesses to the municipality of Alcudia.
Projects include improving the road from Sa Pobla to Alcudia and the stretch between the Artà road and the roundabout bordering with Muro.
Gonzalo Aguiar, the roads director, guaranteed that improvements to the Sa Pobla-Alcudia road would be completed before the motorway reached Sa Pobla to prevent bottlenecks. The town council and the Council of Majorca are also negotiating the construction of a roundabout on the Artà road, on the border between the municipalities of Muro and Alcudia.