Fire prevention and department news for Hornby Island Fire Rescue
Hornby Isla
nd Fire Rescue was well represented in the 2011 incarnation of the Polar Bear Swim. Len Olsen, Doug Chinnery, Julian Laffin, and Patrick Lui all went for a swim at Grassy Point to ring in the New Year.
HIFR wishes you and your family a happy, prosperous, and safe New Year.
At 1PM on Christmas Eve we got a Duty Officer call reporting trees down across the power lines to the Recycling Depot. The Deputy and the Chief arrived on scene to find 2 trees had blown over, taken out the hydro lines and were blocking the road. Sixteen cars and their passengers were trapped at the Depot unable to escape.
After determining that the power lines were dead, we limbed and cut the trees to create a slot large enough for a car to drive through. Stani, the Depot manager, used the back hoe to move the cut logs and all of the trapped people were able to leave. Christmas was saved!
From all of us at Hornby Island Fire Rescue, have a great Christmas, and we hope you all have a prosperous and fulfilling New Year. Be safe and drive carefully.
This year’s cadet camp will fall on March 23 and March 24. You can sign up kids between 10 and 14 by emailing cadetcamp@hifd.org or by calling the firehall at 250.335.2611. We can only take 20 kids this year, so let us know early.
What is cadet camp? Click here for more information.
In the event of a fire, HIFR cannot rely on having an endless supply of water from a hydrant the way urban centers do. Our hydrants come in the form of the ocean, backyard ponds, or one of the many storage tanks that we have placed around the island.
When the situation calls for it, our pumper truck can empty its entire load through hoselines in under 5 minutes. We need to be able to get water on scene as quickly as possible. To this end, we have contracted Jed Young to install 4 new tanks at pre-determined locations around the island.
Tanks will be installed in the following locations:
Jed has sandblasted and painted the tanks with a rust resistant paint. The tanks are now all in their proper locations. They need to be backfilled to hold them in place, plumbed with fire department hookups, and then filled with water. We are still on schedule for having all of the new tanks usable by the end of the year. Look forward to additional landscaping during the upcoming spring season.
We are thrilled to have the Hornby Island Arts Council take a keen interest in integrating the storage tanks into the island landscape. They have coordinated island artists to paint murals on each of the tanks as funding comes available.
Graham Herbert has completed the latest project with his beautiful mural on the Sandpiper tank on Central road. The Whaling Station tanks on St Johns Pt Road is the next one to be done. Glen Rubina has been commisioned for that job. Elaine Savoie is also lined up for a mural on the Savoie Road tank.
Ten members of the fire department gave up a Saturday to retrofit some additional floor supports in the new clinic. We installed 14 new footings in the crawlspace of the clinic. These footings will bear the weight of 6×6 posts that will support the existing beams midspan.
All of the concrete was mixed outside of the crawlspace, loaded into 5 gallon buckets, and pushed on dollies to the forms that were being filled. Saddles were then placed on the footings to hold the posts.
Hornby Island Fire Rescue is proud to be a part of this massive community effort to build our new medical clinic. We have a special stake in this building since it is where most of our medical calls either end or start out. We all feel a little more connected to the building having worked on it.
