In the injured police officers’ cases, 11 minutes and 5 miles could have been the difference between a successful recovery and a less successful recovery, or worse.

That’s how much more time and distance emergency personnel would have had to travel to get the officers to Harrison Medical Center in Silverdale. Come 2019, if plans conitune in the present course, that will be the only option.

We are grateful that the two police officers shot early Dec. 17 are recovering from their injuries. One was shot more than once in the abdomen and required surgery. The other officer was shot in the waist but was treated and discharged the same day.

The site of the shooting, Lions Park, is .9 mile and a 3 minute drive from Harrison Medical Center on Cherry Avenue. The site is 5.9 miles and a 14-minute drive to Harrison Medical Center on Myhre Road. Granted, an ambulance will be traveling at a higher rate of speed than a motorist, so the drive time would be less than 14 minutes. But there will be cases where seconds count. This incident points to the importance of having an emergency room available in Kitsap’s largest and more industrialized city.

We again urge CHI Franciscan to work with the City of Bremerton to keep a community hospital here (it would provide improved access to emergency medical care for Port Orchard and South Kitsap, too). The necessity is clear:

Bremerton has a permanent population of 40,000 residents, but the daytime population is likely considerably more.

There are 1,400 workers at Naval Hospital Bremerton, 2,600 at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, and a share of the 18,300 civilian and military workers at Naval Base Kitsap.

Bremerton is home to three of the top private-sector employers in the county.

Bremerton is home to two major defense contractors.

Bremerton is home to two of the seven top public sector employers in the county: Bremerton School District and Olympic College.

Bremerton is the largest and most urban city in Kitsap County. According to the U.S. Census, 21.5 percent of the population is considered to be in poverty and 12.9 percent do not have health insurance. The median household income is the lowest in the county — $45,658, compared to $56,226 in Poulsbo, $61,021 in Silverdale, and $62,587 in Port Orchard. The veteran population is 4,936, the largest in the county.

Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent and members of the City Council told state health officials Feb. 21 that moving Harrison Medical Center from Bremerton to Silverdale would make access to medical care difficult for older and lower-income residents of their city. Many of those residents depend on transit or others to get around.

The Bremerton community helped build what is now Harrison Bremerton, and it deserves a say in its future. Harrison Medical Center began in 1911 as City of Bremerton Hospital; Benjamin Harrison was an early investor in the hospital, and his wife Anna volunteered there to care for people stricken during the flu epidemic of 1918. It became City General Hospital that year, was gifted to a community foundation in 1942 (it was initially gifted to the city, but that was prohibited by state law), and merged in 1956 with a surplused government hospital purchased by a foundation of local residents. When times were tough — the Depression, the war years — the community raised money to keep the hospital going. The community raised more than $600,000 for the current medical center on Cherry Avenue.

CHI Franciscan owes it to Bremerton to allow a community hospital to operate here.

— What is your opinion: Should there be a community hospital in Bremerton? Write rwalker@soundpublishing.com.