It Could Be An Alarming Situation
The fire response time to the Five Mile Prairie is so long that city fire officials have begun protesting new development on the bluff.
It would take city fire engines or ambulances almost 10 minutes to reach the city limits, a response time that could leave a home engulfed or a heart attack victim beyond rescue.
The Spokane City Fire Department knows its response is slow and has objected to a Five Mile Prairie development because it is outside the sphere of fire coverage required by the Growth Management Act.
Fire hazard at the Rossmoor Ridge subdivision, 19 homes on the eastern overlook of the prairie, could be remedied by sprinklers in the homes. The extra cost would be about $1 per square foot.
But the objection is a clear reminder that the Five Mile Prairie - a prime growth area - lacks some city services in spite of being within the city limits.
“Adequate public services concerning fire and emergency medical response do not exist” as required, wrote city fire marshal Garry Miller to planning commissioners.
“This is going to come up more often because of the trend and desire to build out,” said Miller last week.
The Growth Management Act requires a fire station within 2.5 road miles. The prairie’s nearest, on Indian Trail Road, is four miles from some developments and accessible by only two switchback roads to the south.
The city wants to respond within three minutes; after that time, the risk to homes and fire fighters escalates, according to Miller.
“It’d be OK if there was a decent road,” said city planner Andrew Worlock.
“There is a different level of service up there,” said Miller. “Should we be building up there, when we don’t have the support services in place yet?”
Complicating the issue is the city boundary, which splits the prairie. The fire station at the corner of Strong and Five Mile roads, nearly within sight of the Rossmoor Ridge development, responded to 106 fires in 1996. But it is manned by volunteers in the county’s Fire District 9, and there are no standing agreements requiring those firefighters to respond to homes in the city.
The city has considered a joint-operating agreement, but the response time of the volunteers is longer than that desired by the city.
“That’s not an issue for the homes in the county,” said Bob Anderson, chief of Fire District 9. “We get a pretty good response time from the volunteers.”
There are fewer problems with city-county agreements between police. In fact, a group of Five Mile Prairie residents has considered starting a community-oriented policing station that would cover both the city and county areas of the prairie.
Neighbors would like to see the station in the old brick schoolhouse, located on the corner of Five Mile and Strong roads. The school has failed code requirements; it’s now fit for a family of swallows, nested in the eaves.
The building closed in the late ‘60s, and was a Mead School District warehouse for 30 years until it was abandoned by the district this winter.
Pat Bledsoe, a Five Mile resident, asked the school board last year to consider leasing the building to the neighborhood. The building, a two-story structure with a gym, stage and lunchroom, could also house a community center, she said.
“Something to hold the community together, we need that up here,” said Bledsoe, 52, who attended when the building was an elementary school.
She and others are concerned about recent car break-ins and home burglaries. Having a station on the prairie would give “a police presence” to deter criminals, she said. There are informal neighborhood block watches, but the distance between some homes makes it difficult. And residents of the newer homes in subdivisions haven’t hooked into the informal, colloquial network of longtime residents.
“You don’t meet your neighbors any more,” said Bledsoe. “This would bring us together, and in that sense, it would make us safer.”
Terry Carver, coordinator of SCOPE, agrees. The building, he said, would be a perfect neighborhood police office, housing city and county officers, corrections officials, social workers, even representatives of the public prosecutor’s and public defender’s offices.
Mead officials are too busy opening a new high school to worry about the abandoned warehouse. But the school board this winter announced plans to sell the building. The sheriff would like to have the building donated to the neighborhood.
, DataTimes