Friends of Arden Bluffs: The closing of Fire Station #33

Contact Jonathan Ganz (jganz@sailnow.com) for more information.

Thank you for your help gathering petition signatures! If you have additional signatures, I need them by noon on Thursday prior to the Metro Fire Station board meeting (details below). The more the better! I have over 350 names, which is outstanding, given we've only had a few days to gather them!

I created a California Public Record Information request and sent it to the Metro Fire District headquarters. It contains a request for items such as the following (budget and minutes) items, most of which are missing, incomplete, hard to find, or lacking detail or justification on their website. Thank you Hal Hillmann for bringing Cal. Statutes 6250 through 6276.48 to my attention.

Items requested:

Breakdown of Board member salaries
Minutes showing discussion and decision to close Station #33, including arguments for and against (2008, 2009)
Minutes showing discussion and decision to leave or remove helicopter service (justification and breakdown for 2009 budget item if removing ($120K), e.g., #205110, #220500)
Land Acquisitions (approx. $8M)
Building Acquisitions (approx. $6M)
Structures and Improvements
Construction of Fire Stations (#20.069), e.g., Property Acquisition for Station 61, Station 29 justification

Thursday, June 11th - 2101 Hurley Way in Sacramento at 6pm

Your presence at the meeting will help convince the board to revisit their decision to close the station!

Directions:

Head southwest on US-50 W toward Exit 18About 11 mins 11.5 mi
Take the Howe Ave exit toward Power Inn Rdgo 0.3 mi
Turn right at Howe Ave (signs for Howe Ave)About 4 mins go 2.2 mi
Continue straight to stay on Howe Avego 0.3 mi
Turn left at Hurley WayAbout 1 min go 0.1 mi

Building is on the left side of the street, with parting in the back.

This is an update to the previous communication to the community list regarding the closure of Metro Fire Station #33, something already "decided" by the Metro Fire District Board. Many of you have signed a petition that states,

"As a resident of the Arden Bluffs neighborhood in Orangevale, CA, I am against the closure of the fire department on Main St. and the shutdown of the fire helicopter. Due to its proximity to the state park, this area is highly susceptible to fire, and it has a history of arson. It is unacceptable to remove this dedicated fire unit!"

If you haven't yet signed the petition, please let me know by e-mail or by telephone, and I'll get a petition to you. I strongly encourage you to speak with your neighbors about this situation! Some residents don't have email or didn't share it on the petition.

So far, every home visited has signed the petition (over 200 so far), and every signature counts!

The update:

Yet another example of why Station #33 shouldn't close:

http://cbs13.com/local/orangevale.grass.fires.2.1022104.html

Here's a local map showing the station. As you can see, it's good coverage for the local communities. The next closest one is Greenback and Illinois, which is significantly further away.

Previously:

I spoke with Capt. Pebbles, the Information Officer for the Metro Fire District. He was helpful in that he explained the time/distance justification for closing Station 33, but in my opinion he wasn't as helpful when he tried to make the claim that Station 33 would be open for "red flag" days. I asked him for a clarification of these days, and he said, "high temperature (over 100), low-humidity, and high winds." It seems to me that this definition covers most of the summer days between June and September, not to mention the occasional lightning and thunder storms during other months.

Capt. Pebbles also seemed stumped by the basic question of why there was no notice or call for public comment from those affected by the closures prior to the decision. His statement that "it's published on the website" and "you can attend the meetings" is sort of a cop-out in my opinion. It seems to me that the Fire District needs to make an effort to get public comment, not just rely on people proactively investigating agencies who are elected by us, paid by us, and ultimately report to us.

A great suggestion he made was to mitigate the fire danger by creating a defensible space. However, for those on the bluffs, this conflicts with the Folsom Lake State Recreation Area (which includes Lake Natoma) objection to any changes made by those of us who live on its borders. When I told him this, he had two comments. The first was "that's insane, have them call me if there's a problem." The second was to give me the number of Jim Michaels, the SRA district manager (916-988-0205). Michaels is the person responsible for community involvement in fire mitigation. I left a message, but I have yet to receive a return call.

I also called Thomas Lawson, who is the chairman of the board of directors for the Metro Fire District. He also represents Fair Oaks on the board, and he voted for the station closure. He can be reached at 916-366-4000 if you would like to voice your displeasure. Apparently, the only supervisor who voted against the closure was Ray Trujillo, who represents District 3 (Orangevale).

As many of you know, KCRA 3 in the person of Richard Sharp was kind enough to do a follow-up story about the situation. The link to the story, which includes a video that was aired on Channel 3 and 58 can also be found here: http://www.kcra.com/video/19629947/index.html. He said that he's interested in defensible space issue, and I will keep him in the loop, of course.

You can find quite a bit of information about the reasons for the closure on the Metro website, which gives the public limited contact information (a general purpose email address and telephone number, but no way to contact the board directly), but the website is difficult to navigate, with lots of missing pages. I spent a couple of hours going over the report. It's close to 100 pages, including site maps. I came across the following information, which is somewhat disturbing, since it seems to indicate that the board decision doesn't reflect some important information in the report. And, in some cases, the report seems to be lacking some important details.

Whether the decision does or doesn't take this information into account is almost beside the point, since the public was not given notice, and public comments are limited to three minutes (and not actionable) at the board meetings.

Here's part of what I found. (Citygate - http://www.citygateassociates.com/ - did the study for SMFD)

"... Citygate’s analysis of prior response statistics and use of geographic mapping tools reveals that the SMFD has a speed and weight of attack problem in some areas. Across the overall District, deployment is good and very close to meeting national best practice guidelines in the developed areas. Where deployment is not as strong, it is between some stations and on the outer edge areas where population and calls for service are fewer.

Population drives calls for service, and development density drives the level of District tax revenues. Taken together, these factors mean that deployment planning will focus resources where there are more calls for service and the economic revenue exists to support deployment at more than a rural level of deployment.

<> A building fire in an urban area exposes adjoining buildings immediately, creating the threat of a wide area conflagration; ...."

According to this, the only mention of a "wide area conflagration" is for a building fire in an urban area. What about the Oakland Hills scenario potential of the green belts?

"2.3.3 Wildland Fire Risk
The wildfire threat in SMFD is of concern in some areas as shown in Map Series #2. Some of the District’s edge neighborhoods, especially along natural open space river areas, are exposed to wildfire. Over the decades the District has, in fact, experienced serious wildfires within its borders. To combat this risk, the District works closely with its mutual aid partner fire departments while training and equipping its firefighters for wildland firefighting in SMFD County conditions."

This is the only mention I could find about wildland fire risk. This doesn't say much beyond that they "work with others." I found the following list, which indicates that "grass fires" are the number one fire-related incident after non-fire incidents. Building fire incidents are listed further down the list:

Incident Type Count
321 EMS call, excluding vehicle accident with injury 41,482
611 Dispatched and canceled en route 5,901
311 Medical assist, assist EMS crew 3,324
300 Rescue, emergency medical call (EMS), other 2,359
322 Vehicle accident with injuries 2,283
700 False alarm or false call, other 1,641
900 Special type of incident, other 1,617
600 Good intent call, other 1,445
554 Assist invalid 1,093
324 Motor vehicle accident no injuries 1,084
550 Public service assistance, other 1,079
622 No incident found on arrival of incident address 992
500 Service Call, other 806
143 Grass fire 487
510 Person in distress, other 474
111 Building fire 408

In fact, the report specifically identifies the bluff area as "High Hazard Severity Zone" on their map, which was included in the report.

Interestingly, here's an excerpt from the May 14, 2009 minutes:

Finding #10

• While it might be assumed that the District had a few fire stations too close together due to prior independent agency decisions, the fact today is that due to call volumes, simultaneous calls and a difficult to serve road network, there are actually very few if any areas where there is redundant fire station coverage.

Yet, Station #33 was closed.

What do we do next?

Roberta MacGlashen will be having her monthly community meeting this Friday at 7:30 am at Annie's Restaurant at the corner of Greenback and Beech (near Hazel). While there's not much Supervisor MacGlashen can do directly, I've been assured by her chief of staff that he will be looking into the interagency communication issues. I suspect there will be press coverage for this event.

The Metro Fire District meets every second and fourth Thursday, and is open to the public. The next meeting is June 11th at 6pm at 2101 Hurley Way in Sacramento. I and a couple of you have said that you're planning on attending, and I urge everyone to make it to this meeting if at all possible. We have strength in numbers. We have strength when there is media coverage.

If you're interested in the full report, you can find it here:

http://www.sacmetrofire.ca.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=211&Itemid=221

Here's the hazard map: