Hillsboro Fire Chief Wins Celebrity Bell Ringing Fund Raising Contest

Yes, we “smoked them!” That was one comment following our fund-raising Celebrity Bell Ringing for the Salvation Army on December 20th at the Civic Center Plaza. It lasted just one hour (noon – 1:00), but Hillsboro Fire and Rescue's Chief Greg Nelson raised more than both the Police Chief and the Mayor combined!

Our red kettle overflowed with more than $1,248 in contributions from citizens, city employees, firefighters, staff and the firefighters’ union, IAFF Local 2210. Our thanks go out to each and every person who contributed.

The mayor laid down the gauntlet early by circulating flyers depicting Hillsboro Fire Chief Greg Nelson and Police Chief Carey Sullivan as his two

elf helpers

. Not to be outdone, firefighters from Truck-3 elevated the Mayor’s collection kettle….about 10-feet in the air! (It was lowered to its normal position by competition time).

Here are our celebrity totals (actually, paper money only because no one wanted to count the coins):

Hillsboro Fire & Rescue Chief Greg Nelson $1,248
Hillsboro Police Chief Carey Sullivan $632
Hillsboro Mayor Jerry Willey $271

When the Salvation Army counted all the coins, the one hour effort totaled $2,277.75. A great effort to help needy people in the Portland! Thanks for everyone’s help!

9-11 Memorial Plaque and Tiles

   Hillsboro Fire will be placing a plaque at the base of the flagpole at the Cherry Lane Fire Station this week in observance of the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 9-11. The rock the plaque will be attached to was donated by American Landscape Supply. Retired Hillsboro Fire Lieutenant Larry Yakymi milled the rock and attached the stone.

   On Sunday, September 11, 2011, Hillsboro Fire will invite the public into the Cherry Lane Fire Station No. 6 for an open house. There will be refreshments and tours around the fire station.

   In addition to the 9-11 plaque, the station tours will highlight the roughly 400 tiles created by students at Patterson Elementary School in 2002. The tiles, two per student, were created to show what the students felt in the wake of September 11, 2001, and what they thought the future held. They were to be for a memorial site at the Oregon Zoo. However, funding for that project never materialized. Patterson Elementary parent volunteer Shannon Rubeo has spearheaded a campaign to get the student’s work placed in a public building or place. This past month, with a combination of volunteer and on-duty efforts, firefighters placed the tiles on a wall in the Cherry Lane Fire Station where anyone touring the station will be able to see.

   We hope you can attend the open house, Sunday, September 11, 2011, from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm at 21880 NW Cherry Lane.

Technical Rescue Crew Pulls Hunter to Safety

Hillsboro Fire and Rescue’s Technical Rescue resources were dispatched Monday afternoon (8/29/11) to a report of a deer hunter who had fallen over a cliff in a remote area of northwestern Washington County. Our firefighters responded along with Banks Fire District crews to a section of timber managed by Longview Timber off of Sherman Hills Road. The hunter was reportedly okay and was communicating with emergency dispatchers via cell phone. He had fallen about 100 feet down a brushy, steep hillside and had caught himself on a tree limb just before he was about to fall nearly straight down another 40-feet.

Washington County Sheriff’s Deputy Dan Charter was able to locate 32-year old Jason Henry of Beaverton. Henry was blowing a whistle to help rescuers locate him.

Hillsboro Tech Rescue crews sent two firefighters down on ropes to assess Henry and ensure he was uninjured. Banks Firefighters and the remaining HFD crew set up a rope haul system to pull Henry and the two firefighters back up to the cliff top. He was unhurt.

Henry told firefighters he was bow hunting and was tracking a deer when he fell over the cliff’s edge. He was carrying water, a whistle, a knife and a cell phone. All of those items helped him survive this incident.

Training for Rescues Below Ground

When the word rescue comes to mind, most people think of over a cliff, in the water or trapped in a smashed car. For some firefighters, it also means rescuing people below ground. Hillsboro Fire and Rescue conducted a Trench Rescue Technician course this week for our younger firefighters and for any firefighters in the region who wanted to attain that additional certification.
Held this week at our Cherry Lane Fire Station No. 6 and Training Center, the class focused on the newest Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) rules for firefighters building shoring in preparation for a below ground rescue. Most often, these incidents occur when constructions crews either forget or take shortcuts to installing proper collapse prevention equipment when digging below ground for buildings or utility lines. When the ground collapses on top of a person, crush trauma may occur and firefighters are in a race against time for several reasons:

1. If the patient’s head is buried, the lack of oxygen may kill the person within minutes.
2. The crushing pressure on large portions of the body decreases oxygen to the blood and triggers cells to release large quantities of toxins into the blood stream which can cause renal failure, liver damage, breathing problems and cardiac arrest.

Firefighters must balance the need to speedily rescue the patient while maintaining their own safety in an environment which has already proven unstable. The skills they learned this week help them to quickly building shoring, deploy rescue shoring bracing and use the latest equipment and techniques to safely rescue a trapped worker.

Prepare for the Worst Case!

We never know when it will happen—a bus accident, a chemical leak or a terrorist incident. There are many scenarios that could produce a Mass Casualty Incident or MCI. The goal in an MCI is to triage the injuries, provide immediate temporary treatment in the field to the largest number of salvageable patients and transport all patients to the hospitals in the most expeditious manner possible. This requires leadership, teamwork and coordination.

Our drill this week in Hillsboro involved Hillsboro Fire Department, Forest Grove Fire & Rescue, Cornelius Fire & Rescue, Washington County Fire District No. 2, Metro West Ambulance and Life Flight Air Ambulance. The mission was to practice this low frequency incident that can easily overwhelm first responders. Our incidents have differed each day. Usually, they involved a school bus filled with students. A collision (simulated) occurs with another vehicle or possibly two to three other vehicles of varying types. Students from various Hillsboro high schools and other volunteers presented simulated injuries with the aid of moulage, makeup and prosthetics applied to the body to simulate trauma injuries. The firefighters first arriving on the scene had to quickly set up a command structure and triage the patients. The incident commander had to order additional resources that would arrive in time to help them get the most seriously injured to area hospitals within the first hour following the crash. That often requires a well choreographed process of extricating mangled bodies from crunched cars without doing more harm.

The incident commander must delegate many tasks to firefighters trained in their respective tasks. Some will provide treatment to the patients. Others will coordinate the large number of ambulances required to transport 15 to 20 patients from a single incident. All this has to occur while ensuring everyone is operating in a safe manner.

Our thanks go to the citizens served by all of the agencies taking part in this week’s drill. Your support of them helps make the public safety network we all rely upon much stronger.

Glencoe High SKID Program

The 1600 students and teachers of Glencoe High School packed their football field stands for a special presentation by public safety agencies. The program is designed to keep teens alive through the prom season. Dubbed SKID, which stands for Stop Kids Intoxicated Driving, portrays a fatal, two car accident that follows several teenagers' involvement with the use of alcohol.

The scenes are graphic. They are intended to convey the tragedy of such an incident and leave a lasting impression. Firefighters from Hillsboro Fire and Rescue, along with officers from Hillsboro Police and Washington County Sheriff’s Office, teamed up with Metro West Ambulance, Life Flight, the Washington County Medical Examiner’s office and Fuiten, Rose and Hoyt Funeral Home to make the dramatization complete.

From the looks on students’ faces afterwards, the event had an impact. We are always hopeful that the prom season will pass without a tragic incident.

From the Washington County Sheriff’s Office web site: Since its creation in 1998, under the leadership of Retired Deputy Tim Moore, an average of six to nine SKID events have been staged each year on Washington County high school campuses. This has allowed approximately 82,000 students to participate in the SKID Program. During this same time period, a review of available data has found that there were seven alcohol-related traffic crashes in Washington County involving teen drivers. Of these, two led to traffic fatalities. Although any number of traffic crashes involving young people is unacceptable, the SKID Program has been effective in reinforcing the message that underage drinking puts young people in dangerous situations and can bring on disastrous and fatal consequences.

Quack! means Help!

Engine 5 rescued 2 baby ducks from the storm drain at Barberry and Linden on Friday night. They attempted to catch the mother as well and relocate them all to a nice new home near a pond. The mother would have none of this! We did not want her to give up and leave the area or injure her in trying to catch her. That would leave us with 2 baby duck orphans!

It was felt the best course of action was to get them all back together and let mom deal with getting them all home. That’s what we did and they all waddled off together and lived happily ever after. There are no pictures of this event; it was just too dark in the area they were.

We're Preparing. Are You?

On Tuesday, May 10, 2011, employees of the City of Hillsboro, along with those in numerous other cities in Washington County and county emergency managers, will conduct a countywide disaster drill. Dubbed “Sheer Dynamics,” it’s a practice run at handling a major disaster caused by extremely high winds and accompanied by flooding. While the drill is to test the processes of intergovernmental communication, coordinating scarce resources and informing the public, it is a good reminder for citizens to take a few minutes to do some preparation around your home in the event of a disaster.
Here are a few good tips to get you prepared in the event of an area-wide disaster:
1. Develop a communication plan
a. In some cases, such as severe earthquake and high winds, our communications systems could be heavily damaged. Have a backup plan to communicate with your family members if they are caught scattered across town. Collect and distribute to all family members the phone numbers of the most logical places where your family members will be on a given day. Distribute those numbers to all family members.
b. Select an out-of-state family member or friend as your emergency contact for information exchange. Often, local phone systems may be overloaded or damaged too severely to make a local call. But, if you can get a dial tone, you can frequently make a long distance call.
2. Create a Disaster Kit -- It’s often called a 72-hour kit because it should contain emergency supplies to last your entire family for at least three days. (Recommendation: Make a kit for one week!) Your kit should contain:
a. Food – select food that will last a long time on the shelf but will be readily eaten by all members of your family for three to seven days
b. Water – one gallon per person per day (don’t forget pets!) You can live for weeks without food, but only a few days without water!
c. Medicines – an emergency supply of medicines are essential, especially if you have a serious medical condition.
d. Battery-powered radio
e. Flashlights with spare batteries
f. Money (ATMs are useless when the power has failed )
3. Get to know your neighbors -- Determine their capabilities and resources and create a plan to pool and share scare resources, such as chain saws or four-wheel drive vehicles. Also, plan to check on and render assistance to elderly or sick neighbors.

There are many more tips on surviving a disaster at www.ocem.org. Simply click on Emergency Preparedness.

New Fire Chief

Chief Nelson Badge Ceremony

It’s official. Greg Nelson is our new Fire Chief. Mayor Jerry Willey presented Chief Nelson with his new Fire Chief’s badge Tuesday night at City Council meeting. Chief Nelson’s wife, Joann, pinned on the shiny new badge. She was accompanied by the couple’s son. Chief Nelson was selected by City leadership following an unsuccessful national search for a suitable successor to retired Fire Chief Gary Seidel. Following the badge ceremony, nearly 75 people attended a reception in Chief Nelson’s honor at the Civic Center.

Nelson has worked more than 30 years at the Department. He’s held every rank en route to the top spot.

Jones Farm Station

As soon as the rains let up (whenever that will be is anyone's guess), contractors should begin site preparation on Hillsboro Fire and Rescue’s newest fire station. The facility will replace the aging and too small Parkwood Station which does not meet seismic requirements for public safety building. The new station, which will be called the Jones Farm Fire Station, will be located on NE 25th on property leased from the Port of Portland’s Hillsboro Airport just east of the Jones Farm neighborhood and Intel Jones Farm.

The winning contract bidder, P&C Construction of Portland is slated to complete the $3.2-million contract by December 2011. Architects from Group MacKenzie of Portland designed the 13,458-square foot facility. Funding for the station comes from Recovery Zone bonds issued by the City of Hillsboro in December 2010. The firefighters’ positions at Station No. 5 are funded by the Local Option Tax. Those firefighters will move their existing fire engine to the new station when it is completed.