The North Summit Fire District is still largely run by volunteer fire-fighters, but growth in the area could bring changes.
The District is also acquiring a new site for a permanent station in the Tollgate Canyon area.
The spokesman for the North Summit District, Tyler Rowser, said they annexed the Tollgate area about five years ago.
He said they’ve been leasing a site in the area to house fire equipment. Now they are carrying out a so-called “friendly condemnation” of about 3 acres, with the cooperation of the Homeowners Association there.
It’s a site they can use.
“It’s a very remote community,” Rowser explained. “So getting there from Coalville or Wanship, even, is timely. And in our business, seconds count. So, having people close by there to quickly respond is the key with this. The HOA’s been really good to work with, with the fire district. They see the value in it from the very beginning. And this is kind of—through all the back and forth with attorneys, this was the final solution as to how they had to acquire this property.”
He said the location is in the Mid-Mountain area, near the site of the Pine Meadow Ranch HOA equipment shed. Rowser said it will carry out the usual functions of a fire station.
“We’ll have basic rescue equipment there, like we do now, Wildland Urban Interface and medical equipment,” Rowser continued. “Right now, I don’t believe the county’s committing to putting an ambulance up there. But as the fire district is a first response agency for medical as well, we’ll have our equipment to render aid to those in need up there quickly.”
Rowser said that it will not be staffed full time. “It’ll be volunteers up there that will staff that. We have a pretty good community up there that’s rallied around to help, to make sure that they’re protecting their own community and helping their neighbors.”
Rowser said they will work on the station’s design this year and possibly break ground by 2020. Construction will be funded with money they’ve been setting aside since they annexed TollGate.
With this location, the District will have four stations total. They have some 25 to 30 volunteer fire fighters
“We do have paid on-call people 24 hours a day,” Rowser explained. “We are seeing our call volume increase over the years, so. Now that we are working with the county in, y’know being an EMS response agency as well, that’s really boosting those calls. We’re seeing the time savings to getting to patients much faster as well.”
He added that the residents of the Tollgate area include fire fighters, emergency personnel—and even North Summit’s Fire Chief.
When the Tollgate fire broke out last summer—sparked by a truck striking a large boulder—Rowser said that luck, weather and wind were factors in their effort to put down the blaze.
“Where we’re seeing this, more often y’know, it doesn’t take much to start these fires once that grass dries out,” Rowser continued. “From the time of day when the winds were blowing. One thing we can’t control is nature. So that’s, one of the variables of our job that we constantly have to be dealing with is, what is the weather doing, what is nature doing to help us or hindering us.”
Rowser said that the boulder was removed and added that the best news from the Tollgate blaze, and the Echo Canyon Fire in September, was that no structures were lost.
