One of Reno’s hidden communities just got a bit safer.

The Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District is opening station 37 this weekend… a fire fighting base servicing Hidden Valley.

Jesse Corletto is one of its two 24/7 fire fighters and says their truck is loaded with equipment for various emergency and rescue situations.

“Rock climbing or hiking around the areas happens,” says Corletto. “We cover a lot of district that has a lot of potential for people to get stuck.”

He says their truck is fully equipped with helmets and harnesses for water rescue in the river and rope bags for carabineers to rescue endangered hikers.

They have a large area to cover because their district also includes I-80 towards Wadsworth.

Having the area covered is important because last year, the Fire District and the city of Reno ended their inner-local aid agreement where the city of Reno assisted with fire protection services.

When that happened, a transition plan with 500 elements was developed and Fire Chief Charles Moore says station 37 was near the top of the list.

“It was a huge priority,” says Moore. “It was a need identified in the transition plan through our GIS study and it’s absolutely imperative that we have this resource there to serve the Hidden Valley community.”

He says to stand up the district, they had to construct the Hidden Valley station.

“With this placement of the new station were able to service Hidden Valley within eight minutes which is the standard that the board of fire commissioners adopted,” Moore says.”

Before to transition, response time was still about eight minutes but done by the city of Reno, a service no longer used.

The Fire Protection District has been serving the area since July of last year out of temporary office provided by the sheriff until this station opened a month and a half ago.

Everyone in the community is welcome to attend the stations official grand opening this Saturday morning at 11.