Around 7pm New Years Day evening, we received a page to help support the Estacada Fire Station. Because of the significant amount of rain we were getting, most of Estacada was under water. Brad responded on Engine 129 (Jodi stayed home since she had to work the next day, and very few people were in district to respond if Colton had an emergency). Their first assignment was to help sandbag the new Estacada Library. Unfortunately, they found that the library was already under 2 feet of water and sandbags weren’t going to help at all.
On their way back to the Estacada station, a call came in for a house fire. Colton’s Engine 129 crew was the second engine on scene, but first to attack the fire. A mudslide had hit a house, pushing it completely off its foundation and into a tree. The impact also caused an explosion in the garage, setting the house on fire. The family evacuated, and the fire crews tried to extinguish the fire. Unfortunately, the ground was unstable and access to the house was blocked due to the mudslide. Estacada ended up calling for a second alarm (needing additional fire crews from surrounding towns), so Jodi responded with two other Colton fire fighters on Tender 124. Although we staged at the site, Estacada ended up not needing the extra water, so we eventually returned. On Jodi’s return back to Colton, the crew ran into several down trees across Highway 211, and had to stop and clear the road. Brad and his crew returned to the Estacada station and found out a short while later that another mudslide completely blocked access to the house they had tried to save. Watching the news on Friday and Saturday, it sounds like the house slowly burned completely.
Here is a picture of the house after the fire department stopped the garage portion of the fire, but unfortunately much of the house continued to smolder.
Here are a couple of news clips about both the library and the fire. Note one correction to the news report: the fire department was on scene within minutes of the report, had fire fighters from 5 different departments (Estacada, Colton, Sandy, Clackamas, & Boring), and stayed until the fire was extingushed as much as possible.