Pokemon Go Players Asked Not to Block Cheshire Fire Station
CHESHIRE, Mass. — Pokemon — just stop.
The Cheshire Fire Department is asking players not to hang around the station after players have been found blocking doors with their vehicles.
"We have had numerous incidents lately where we have gone to our station to respond to an emergency call and have found vehicles parked in front of our apparatus bay doors," the department posted on its Facebook page on Thursday.
You can't miss Pokemon Go fever. Players are out and about everywhere since the game launched a couple weeks ago trying to catch the fictional digital "pocket monsters" created more than two decades ago. They're easy to spot: smartphones out searching, often clustered together at a Poke Stop (finding the hidden monsters) or a Gym, where they train or fight them. Those stops and gyms seem to be landmarks, such as city halls, libraries, museums, and police and fire stations.
The hugely popular game is interactive in that players have to go to geographic locations to catch or train their monsters. And that's been causing problems for very real venues and people. The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and Arlington National Cemetery are asking them to stop playing on their grounds. The game has already been indicated in distracted driving, deaths and robberies, and shootings.
And there's apparently Pokemon at the Cheshire Fire Station that's beginning to cause problems for emergency responders.
In one case, firefighters arrived recently to find a woman searching for Pokemon who wouldn't move her car and was angry when told to move out of the way so they could respond to a call.
"She looked at us like we had two heads," said one firefighter.
Cheshire Fire is asking players to be considerate: "Please, please, please do not park in front of our apparatus bay doors. We would appreciate it!"
Tags: fire station, video games,
