Can we get to your home to help you in an emergency?

Late last week a family in rural Forest Grove lost their shop building when it caught fire in the middle of the night. When firefighters arrived the building was completely involved with fire and had already collapsed. It took a dozen firefighters from FGF&R, Hillsboro, Gaston, and Cornelius to extinguish the flames and control the fire, however the situation could have been much worse.

Near the shop was another shop building, the family home, and a large amount of parked heavy construction vehicles and equipment, as well as the timbered woodlands that cover Blooming Fernhill. Had this fire occurred later in the summer when we typically get higher winds and the woods around us are considerably drier this could have easily spread up the hill. In these cases we need to get our equipment and firefighters in to fight the fire quickly so that we can control the spread. What we found last week with the shop fire was that the driveway was so steep with sharp turns, bare spots without gravel, and tightly lined with trees and brush, that we were only able to get one engine (with 4 firefighters) and a command vehicle to where the fire was. All of the other firefighters had to walk in from the main road, which took time and limited the amount of equipment that they could carry. In addition to this, when the fire was controlled we had very little room to turn our engine around.

So what can you do? Our driveway standards are pretty straightforward and are based on the Oregon Fire Code. There are a lot of things we look at in a driveway, but the 5 basic things include:

• Driveways that serve single homes need to be at least 12 feet wide and have a good solid all weather surface such as gravel, concrete, or asphalt. Multiple homes need to be 15 feet wide so that there is room for our engines and your neighbors to pass each other on the road. Make sure turns and corners aren't too tight and that the driveway isn't too steep.
  
• Cut back trees, limbs, and brush so that there is a clear height of 13 feet 6 inches for us to drive through. We hear all of the time that dump trucks can make it, why can't a fire engine? The reason is all of the equipment that we carry on top of our engines. From our emergency lights, radio antennas, and firefighting equipment all of this can be damaged by low hanging trees.
  
• If your driveway is really long (over 400 feet) help us by making wide spots every 400 feet where our fire engines can pass each other. On large fires we will need to bring multiple fire engines and water tenders that may be leaving the scene to go find a fire hydrant to fill with water and return.
  
• Is there a place to turnaround? Our engines and water tenders are quite long, so look at your driveway and determine if you could easily turnaround a big truck there. This is very important to us in times of large wild land fires where we are trying to defend homes from a forest fire. We need to be able to turnaround the engines quickly to get out if the fire becomes out of control and threatens the lives of our firefighters.
  
• Post your address, our green and white reflective address signs are free and can be ordered by calling the fire station at 503.992.3240.

If you need help call us, we would be happy to take a look at your driveway and help you determine what improvements you can make to help us.