Jackson County, Ore. — Schools and public agencies throughout Oregon are getting new funds to help with earthquake preparedness. Most agencies are getting hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Fire District 3 learned Wednesday it was approved for about $1.1 million. It initially applied for $1.4 million. Though, it says they can make more than enough improvements with what they have.
“A seismic event during an earthquake – we can’t be a victim,” said John Patterson.
Patterson is the Deputy Chief and Fire Marshal for Fire District 3.
“To be seismically stable for our fire stations is critically important. We can’t have the fire station falling down on our people, on our equipment,” he said.
Which is why he was one of Fire District 3’s leaders spearheading the project to retrofit fire stations in the case of an earthquake, by applying for grant dollars through the state.
“We had to evaluate all of our fire stations to find out the situation we’re currently in,” he said.
Fire District 3 applied for seven different grants for each of the seven fire stations under its service area.
“We had engineers look over our vulnerability and design some fixes to those vulnerabilities and then we got an estimate on what those fixes would be,” he said.
That initial total for station enhancements was $1.4 million.
“We were awarded five of those grants. So we’re excited about this work to get done,” he said.
The fire district learned Wednesday they were approved for about $1.1 million. The fire district will be able to access their funds through reimbursement with the state.
Eagle Point Fire Station will receive $46,760; Agate Lake will receive $79,340; Dodge Bridge will receive $113,275; Sams Valley will receive $124,433; and Central Point will receive the largest sum of $717,963 – it’s the station that needs the most work.
“That entire roof structure over the engine and the apparatus bay is fairly old and seismic requirements has really been bolstered since that station was constructed. We have a lot of work to do,” he said.
Even without the additional $300,000, the agency said the funds are more than enough to make the needed upgrades.
“Without the grant, we couldn’t otherwise pay for it. It’s just out of our reach,” he said.
One of the fire stations that didn’t receive grant money was gold hill fire station. However, Fire District 3 said that station needed the least amount of work since it’s one of the newer facilities.
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