Santa Maria Fire Chief to discuss fire department readiness at City Council meeting
SANTA MARIA, Calif. - In light of the recent catastrophic Los Angeles area fires, Santa Maria Fire Chief Brad Dandridge is set to make a special presentation at the Santa Maria City Council Tuesday night.
During the presentation, Dandridge will discuss the Santa Maria Fire Department's current state of readiness to respond to similar emergencies.
"Members of the public are always concerned in regards to fire protection within the city limits," said Dandridge. "Questions have arisen, asking me what we do in particular to ensure that our firefighters are ready to respond to emergencies within city limits, so I will be discussing those topics this evening with City Council."
Ahead of the meeting Tuesday morning, Dandridge pointed out he will focus on five key elements the department has in place in order to stay prepared for any sized emergency.
"In order to be prepared as a fire department, we need to ensure we have proper staffing," said Dandridge. "We need to make sure our apparatus are prepared to strategically located, to be able to respond with quick response times. We need to ensure that our firefighters are trained, and we utilize prevention efforts with our prevention department to ensure that the buildings that we're going in for the community are safe for the public and our firefighters, and lastly, we also have, auto-aid agreements with neighboring agencies to ensure that when we are taxed, we are still able to respond and help would be coming."
Dandridge also added Santa Maria's location and topography gives it an advantage when it comes to combating a potential devastating wildfire.
"Santa Maria is unique in its development," said Dandridge. "We're surrounded. We have very limited wildland interface. That wildland interface is where the urban development meets undeveloped land. That's where wildfires typically start. Uniquely, Santa Maria is surrounded by farmland and farmland typically does not burn, so we're fortunate in that aspect."
On the same night, the fire chief is discussing the city's emergency readiness, Santa Maria City Council members are also considering the funding to replace of several antiquated fire hydrants.
"Tonight on the consent calendar for the City Council, we've requested that they award a bid for a water hydrant replacement," said said Shad Springer, Santa Maria Director of Utilities. "We do have some older fire hydrants in Santa Maria that that are called wharf hydrants. They are essentially a fitting on top of threaded pipe and they don't meet current standards. The older wharf hydrants create issues for the city in a number of ways. One, they don't, meet current fire flow standards, and then secondly, they also don't have valves, so when we have a situation where a hydrant might get hit or they have a leak, we have to shut down water in the area affecting the customers. By replacing the hydrants with modern hydrants that have valves, we can effectively do work on them without affecting the neighborhood."
Springer also expressed confidence in Santa Maria's water supply when it's needed to used during emergencies.
"With the recent fires in Los Angeles, there's been a lot of focus on fire supply," said Springer. "In Santa Maria, we have a fairly robust water supply system. The city's water supply is designed to take into account the fire standards for hours of flow."
Tuesday's Santa Maria City Council meeting will be the first in the new year and is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m.
