Fire commission urges rural homeowners to remember need for emergency access

Getting to a fire or medical emergency scene is becoming a challenge especially on homes built on private roads in rural portions of the county.

At the March 16 meeting of the Medford Area Fire Commission, commission members were asked to go back to their town boards and communities urging people to build wider access roads.

“They are glorified driveways and it is a struggle to get in,” said fire chief Mike Filas. He gave the experience of a recent rural fire call where it took half an hour to turn the truck around so it could leave.

Commission chairman Lester Lewis said the roads are supposed to be two rods wide, or 33 feet. In some cases the roads are barely 15 to 16 feet. He said one of the challenges is that many of the lot lines date back to the 1930s when vehicles and equipment were smaller.

Commission member Ron Sromek noted there is responsibility on the property owners. “If they are off the road and back by themselves, the fire department can’t get in,” he said.

Emergency vehicles have grown in size in recent decades in a desire to bring fewer vehicles to a scene and needing more equipment to handle a variety of situations. in other business, commission members: Praised firefighters for making a donation of $9,000 worth of rope ladder equipment which is used for firefighting on steel roofed buildings. The ropes are 300 feet long and are thrown over the structure and are used by the firefighters to access things like chimney fires. “We are not to high angle technical rescue gear,” Filas said. But he said the goal was to make it a little safer for firefighters going on the roof.

Approved cleaning up some accounts to transfer the member contributions to the truck replacement account to the correct account. This must be done annually for accounting purposes. Commission members also approved closing the CD and putting the $27,000 into the regular savings account. This will increase flexibility in using the money if needed and with CD rates still very low, they would not impact interest earnings.