Dear Editor:
Burnaby city council and the fire service make a good point about ambulance wait times (Ambulances are taking too long, Burnaby NOW, Oct. 1), but perhaps the question needs to be asked why Burnaby, with a population of approximately 230,000 has only one ambulance station - the same as Bowen Island, population 3,500!
Granted that political boundaries and ambulance service boundaries are different, and that there are two nearby stations (one in east Vancouver and one in New Westminster), but the fact remains that Vancouver, population approximately 600,000, has nine ambulance stations compared to Burnaby's one.
In light of Burnaby's four town centres sprouting highrise towers up to 70 storeys at a pace that most of us find frightening, is it not time our mayor and council paid more attention to their own inadequate response to population growth and unrestrained densification, rather than criticizing other service providers whose task they might aid with a cooperative stance rather than knee-jerk confrontation?
Thomas Hasek, Burnaby
