Hillsboro Opens Replacement Fire Station

Hillsboro Fire Department opened its newest fire station today with a brief flag raising ceremony just after lunch.

The 13,458-square foot, low profile station will be the replacement for the aging Parkwood Fire Station, which was built in the 1970s as a temporary fire station and fails to meet seismic standards for public safety buildings. The Jones Farm Fire Station is located at 2850 NE 25th Avenue on land leased from the Port of Portland.

“We have met the directive of our policy makers with the improved response times and services with this new station,” said Fire Chief Greg Nelson. “It will be serving the citizens of Hillsboro for decades.”

The facility was staffed with firefighters hired as a result of the Local Option Tax.. They moved from the Parkwood Fire Station.

The “soft opening” of the new station came without much fanfare today due to the recent spate of inclement weather. Workers from Northwest Industrial Services providing the moving vans and staff to move equipment and supplies from from other locations.

“We’re planning an open house for this summer when the weather is better and residents can enjoy coming by to meet the firefighters and tour the station,” said Public Information Officer Storm Smith.

The Jones Farm Fire Station was designed by Group Mackenzie of Portland. It was built by P-and-C Construction of Portland to LEED Gold energy efficient standards to help reduce utility costs and the city’s carbon footprint.

Construction costs of $3.2-million were funded by Recovery Zone Bonds that the City issued in November 2010. The bonds will be repaid over 20 years with Strategic Investment Program revenues.

In addition to the fire engine and crew, department leaders will move a battalion chief from the Downtown Fire Station and the ladder truck and crew from the Ronler Fire Station to Jones Farm. Crews arrived at their new station today and selected their lockers and bunk rooms.

“Centrally locating these other two resources will help us meet our response time goals within nationally recognized standards,” said Chief Nelson.

Hillsboro Fire and Rescue currently operates from five stations strategically located throughout the city to provide fire and emergency medical services to the more than 92,000 citizens.

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.