MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - Falling tiles, water damage, mold... All reasons that the Central Fire Station has seen its last days.

Township Manager Frank Walsh said,"When you look around and look at this facility, we're better than this."

The Central Fire Station started ceasing operations on Wednesday, Feb. 12, and completely closed on Friday, Feb. 14. Chief Cowper and Manager Walsh held a press conference to address the closing of the station.

"We have had a battle here and we've basically have now given up," Chief Cowper said.

A battle to keep not only the firefighters healthy and safe, but to keep the equipment from getting damaged as well. Chief Cowper also addressed response time to residents.

He said, "We know that our response times will be increased up to three minutes, so we want to bring that down to make sure our residents are protected and taken care of."

Right now, firefighters are only operating out of Stations 1 and 2. But to better protect residents, Chief Cowper said a make-shift building is in the works.

He said: "Again, we're going to keep our residents number one. We're going to look immediately at a make-shift central location. The other thing too I want everyone to understand is that when we had the ice storm, we had more calls than we ever had at that period. And we were able to take care of all the calls and we did not use this station."

Like Chief Cowper stated, the township has operated without the station before, but that doesn't mean a new one is not needed. In November 2012, the voters approved the building of a new station. Manager Walsh addressed that as a separate issue.

"These two issues today of closing this and the need for a new station should not be tiebarked," Manager Walsh said.

The make-shift station will be used until a new facility is built. At the Feb. 13 press conference, Manager Walsh said the process for the new station will go on and may be wrapped up in two weeks or even two months.