Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District officials assured Cascadia residents Thursday night that efforts were already underway to build a new substation in Cascadia.
SHFAD officials held a town hall meeting at Cascadia Bible Church Thursday night.
SHFAD formed on Jan. 1. It is operating on its existing funds, through the City of Sweet Home, the former Sweet Home Rural Fire District and the former Sweet Home Ambulance District. In the interim between July 1 and Nov. 15 when the first property taxes are due, the District likely will borrow money to provide operating cash.
“We wanted to come up here and answer some questions and give other information,” SHFAD Board President Don Hopkins said. At this point the District has not secured land for the building, but it is talking with the U.S. Forest Service about some land across Highway 20 from the old Maples Store, near the covered bridge. Officials also are working on a couple of grants to help fund construction of the new substation.
Proponents of the new District said the District would build the new substation to serve Cascadia if the District were approved. The District was created in November when voters in the Sweet Home area passed three measures consolidating fire services under the new District.
“It can be done, and it will be done,” Hopkins said. “we’re going to be proceeding with this as rapidly as possible.”
With a new substation, the District needs a fire crew in Cascadia, which officials sought Thursday night.
Prior to the formation of the new district, the Sweet Home Rural Fire District extended about to the Point Restaurant and to McKercher Park. Now it includes Mark’s Ridge, Cascadia, parts of Berlin Road that were unprotected, Mountain Home and Santiam Terrace.
“Now you’re in our district,” Fire Chief Dean Gray told some 20 Cascadia residents. “We will respond to you.”
In the past, the Fire Department responded to Cascadia, but resources were limited and in-district structures were a priority.
Now, the District can take full advantage of its resources fighting fire in Cascadia, Chief Gray said. It can call on its mutual aid agreements with other departments, like Brownsville and Lebanon.
The long response time to Cascadia is one of the reasons fire officials wanted to bring Cascadia into a fire district and build a substation there, Chief Gray said. With a crew in Cascadia, the community will have a faster initial response, with Sweet Home apparatus and personnel coming up as well.
“The nicest building in the world up here is not going to do any good if we don’t have the people to man it,” Battalion Chief Mike Beaver said, making a call for volunteers.
There is a lot more to being a volunteer than “running and jumping on fire engines,” Beaver said. They have a significant role in the community, from the Christmas Sharing Tree, serving hundreds of children, to the annual fireworks display.
“We’d like to have 10 people up here trained as firefighters,” Beaver said. The District also needs officers and apparatus operators.
He told Cascadia residents that training has gotten a lot more expensive and time intensive over the years, and the District is faced with additional state-mandated training requirements.
At this point, an entry level firefighters must spend about 60 hours in training for basic certification. That includes basic firefighting and hazardous materials training. The District pays the costs of training.
Volunteers must be 18, but there is no upper age limit, Beaver said. The oldest volunteer currently on the Department is about 70 years old.
“They all have a job,” Beaver said. “They all serve a function.”
So far, the new District has received one application from a volunteer.
“We’ve know for years, we didn’t really meet your needs very well,” Battalion Chief Doug Emmert said of emergency medical services. The response time is long to the area from Sweet Home. The consolidation idea had been kicking around Sweet Home since about 1985 as a result.
Down the road, the District would like to have someone in Cascadia as a first response to medical calls. Some equipment, such as a defibrillator, would be available while paramedics respond to calls in Cascadia.
Cascadia residents asked if the substation would still be built if the department did not get 10 volunteers in the area, especially considering the high ratio of volunteers to population that would require.
“It will not serve anybody and good if we don’t have people to respond,” Chief Gray said, but efforts are already underway to build the substation.
Officials said they would be happy if they had five volunteers that worked out in Cascadia. Five is normally the crew they send out with an engine.
The substation would be similar to the one in Foster and the one in Crawfordsville. SHFAD needs approximately one acre for the building.
“We are coming through with what we said we would do,” Hopkins said.