Headed to Seligman from CT (Williams, Ash Fork: real estate, gated, for sale)

[bridgecanyonfire]

Originally Posted by vanneyan

I have received numerous offers to purchase the 2.3 acres I have in Seligman. Does anyone know if the city plans to install water and electricity to the Bridge Canyon area? Right now they're using water tanks there.

Hello,

We are the Private Provider of fire and emergency services for the Bridge Canyon subdevelopment.

To date, there is no plans anytime in the near future to install water lines or water service other than water truck deliveries in the subdevelopment. There is also no future plans of extending the electric lines other than the lines that end at the top of "Preacher Hill" on Bridge Canyon Parkway anytime soon, however, landowners may contact the APS in order to extend a line to your property. Please bear in mind that this is VERY expensive and APS puts you on a waiting list before they come out and install the poles and lines so even though you may pay to have the lines extended, it may take them several months before they even go out to your property to survey the job.

BCVFD

[bridgecanyonfire]

[quote=rambrush;16431]As someone who is in Seligman almost daily and lives down the road in Kingman. There is a small grocery store in town a pretty good volunteer fire department.


The "fire department" in town is a JOKE, not "pretty good". If most people in the area actually knew the "inside" of that FD we think you and them would agree. Just an FYI here but if you live outside of their District borders and they are called to your emergency, #1.. good luck if they respond without complaining and #2.. IF they do respond and you do not pay thier response bill, do not ever think they will respond to your emergency again so just HOPE you do not ever have another emergency of any type and call on them to respond. They will try to find every way possible to avoid it IF they know who you are and that you did not pay them.

This is exactly how we got started for private services in Bridge Canyon, because most of the "intelligent" locals wanted no part of the SFD game.
As for us, we do not charge the Bridge Canyon resident for response. This is whether you are a real property owner or one that is still in finance, and it does not matter whether you live in the subdevelopment full time or just own property there and you reside in another state. We do not care what your income bracket may be(since we do not charge). Just as long as you own or are buying property in the subdevelopment then we will service.

I have lived in this area for almost 12 years so believe what i say on certain things.
We have been lied about so much in this area and from people as well as the town FD Chief that its really sad and these people have absolutely no idea what they are even talking about.

Alot of this kind of talk has caused alot of people to question our Department and how we have the authority of operating as a Private Provider. For those that may call or contact the SFD Chief(John Kennedy) , you may first want to contact the correct ones on this, which is the Yavapai County officials and some state officials and ask if it is legal to operate as a Private Provider in areas that does not have a recognized Fire District. I will forward any info regarding this to anyone upon the asking and i will also give out the contact info for the various County and State Officials regarding this in case you may have questions regarding our "authority" in the subdevelopment. This is just in case anyone happens to "hear" the gossip around here and wants to question.

I noticed a guy here in one of the posts mentioning about the area having "alot of wind". I do not think most of you get that meaning just by the comments some of you have made. What he simply means by that, i think, is gossip and "talk" as there is ALOT of that here, and needless talk that can actually hurt you if you are not careful. This happens, especially if you are a new resident to the area. Everyone that does the gossip will befreind you for awhile just to get info about you, then afterwards, "there she blows".
However there are a few good people around the area but you would just need to study which ones are.

Anyone with questions, i will be totally honest since i know the area quite well since i have lived here for many years so just ask me.

On a lighter note and before i forget, i also noticed someone mentioning about the golf course there at the corner of Via De Oro where the clubhouse is. When i first moved here my husband worked for BCCE clubhouse and was paid by Mr.Tom Backhurst, which he is no longer with us but anyways Bridge Canyon(Republic Properties) have had plans for that golf course since the begginning of time and it will be something that will probably never come to be. Back when he worked there the Rec Center there had several contractors and surveyors come out to determine the suitability of the land being an actual golf course. After they did this they had determined that it would be a HUGE expense that the Clubhouse did not want to put out due to the cost so whether the golf course will ever come to be noone will ever know, possibly not even the Clubhouse BOD(Board of Directors) but alot of us that actually "live" here say probably never.

Another thing i must make mention about the Clubhouse there, which "I" feel is not fair, is that only the ones that actually own thier property has the right to use it. This means if you are still in finance of your property then you would have no right to use it, HOWEVER, they do allow the clubhouse to be "rented" for certain occasions and by those that do not own thier property yet but this must first be planned and organized by the BOD and they schedule when you can use it.

BCVFD

[rambrush]

Thanks for the update guess I never knew Kennedy was the chief, always talked to him in regards to water issues.

I am amazed that there is no district or subscriber fees for your department.
How do you purchase modern SCBA's up to NFPA standards fire engines water tenders and the like?
I understand the main roads are maintained but the secondary ones are not, I take it you have 4x4 type 6's with Caffs to get into the remote locations with limited water.
Or type 1's or 3's with 750 gal water on board? caffs on these?
Do you have a model 20 tow behind that you use a pov with 4x4 to pull it?
How do you refill and return in a timely fashion with limited water there?
With the pinion pines,junipers out there there is a risk of fire being fed with the ground vegitation there as well.
Trying to get something similar off the ground in Montana and have been looking at the homeland security grants and the others but the funding is tough. Let alone all the PPE required wildland fire nomex and structure. adds up fast. Just refueling the equipment takes money and the other is communication equipment, pagers etc.

[bridgecanyonfire]

Hi,

Private Providers are not really regulated by NFPA, only OSHA in the State of Arizona even though we try to recognize the NFPA standards. Most standards regarding engines are mainly the water flow of the pump but they really dont push the issues on that since most Departments that do not have the funds for newer ones can only work with what they have. There are alot of Districts and Departments here in Arizona that still use very old trucks like Whittmann for example. I manned the WhittmannFire Chiefs station 2 a few times along with a member of our that used to be on his Department(the Whittmann Chiefs) and we was supposedly going to respond to any fires there with a water/pumper that was from the 40s. LOL and there is actually no laws on that in Arizona, just as long as they get to the fire and pump. :-S
According to the State Fire Marshalls Office in Phoenix, Arizona actually has very little laws regarding the fire service other than firefighters not being required to hold certification(it is left up to the individual departments on whether they want thier firefighters certified) as well as a few others that really isnt a big deal on alot of things.

But to answer your questions, we mainly rely on donations or we just take the smaller things out of our own pockets. Most of our equipment was donated to us by other Departments though and most of it was very good and useable equipment. SCBA's we use are the Scott 30 minute with demand regulatrs. The only thing we had modified on these was the masks. We modified them to allow voice amplification which is basically nothing more than an add-on just by changing out the lense with a lense that has a "voice mic" in it. Just as long as they pass hydros and stuff then most SCBA's will pass NFPA standards or they will come close to it at least. Its just most Departments nowadays prefer the newer SCBA's because of ease of use and the modernization of them. Once we get the money then we will probably change over to the newer ones also.
As for the trucks, there is a District in the County here whose Chief i am very good freinds with and he has a pumper/tanker that they put out of service due to getting a new one that hes been wanting to give us but we just havent had the chane to go up in there to bring it down yet(Crown King).

Currently we use a utility truck fitted with a drop-in brush unit to serve as our brush truck(actually it serves several purposes) and it does a "fair" job getting in to the places out there but there has been times we have had to hike in.
We just sold our 1950 chevy brush unit here back in Nov because it just got a bit too old for our needs and it was still 6 volt making it very "cold blooded" to start and the pump drew a leak, just some things we really did not want to deal with so we are looking to replace that with a 4x4 flatbed and just fot it with the drop-in we have on the utility now then that will serve as our brush unit. We dont use CAFFs but we do have foam onboard by use of self inducting foam nozzles. Dont really have the proper funds to go with CAFFS as of yet as that is very expensive. :-S
We dont use tow-behind tanks because the fire service frowns on it or at least i had heard BUT there is members out there that tows thier water tanks to our calls for extra water.

Rest of answers follow in another frame...

[bridgecanyonfire]

About your question having to do with "shuttling". We DO shuttle but we also use a folding tank that we leave onscene that the pumpers feed from. There is also those big railroad tanker cars that is kept filled with water too. Bridge Canyon had 3 of those brought out there many years ago long before we was even thought of in the area and the reason they brought those out there was because they have water wells out there that are now out of service and they kept the tanks filled from the wells.
All we do or the LOCALS do is just keep the tanks filled and we just draw the water from those when theres a fire. Afterwards we just refill the tanks. One of the tanks is at the Clubhouse. The second one is at the very southern end of Conquistador Rd about a 1/4 mile before you come to Fort Rock Rd. This one sets just below the Slurry Plant there. The third one is out in Unit 23 where Bridge Canyon Parkway forks off onto Audley Rd. Eventually we are hoping we can get the residents to pitch in enough funds to get at least one of those water wells back in service but it will be rather costly.

A project we have been discussing with Republic Properties over is something you mentioned, and that is about the ground vegetation and deadfall laying around all over the place. We talked this over with them about a year ago and have heard nothing from them about it yet. If you notice when you first go into the subdevelopment you will see those yellow signs telling people about not cutting firewood on subdevelopment lands, etc. This is what we are wanting to change, or at least have Bridge Canyon rewrite. What wed LIKE to have done is just anyone being allowed to go out there and cut the deadfall for firewood and being allowed to cut the dead limbs off of trees, especially on the properties that people do not live on and is just vacant. This will help tremendously in reducing the fire fuels in turn reducing a HUGE possibility of a fire out there. Most of the deadfall out there you will see as you are driving along, especially the piles of deadfall along the roads is from when they cut the roads in, and they just leave the deadfall laying on peoples properties just waiting on a big fire to occur. I have also mentioned this to Bridge Canyon in hopes that either the road cutting crews(which is Republic Properties) cut up the deadfall or allow the locals to go in and cut it themselves and haul it out for thier use as firewood.

[bridgecanyonfire]

You are very right on this type of business being VERY expensive. Luckily we had most of our communications either donated or purchased at surplus rates.
Our entire repeater system which is all on a communications rack(similar to computer server racks) only didnt cost us over 100 bucks i dont think even tho we have put out ALOT of money on various other things including general equipment, trucks, etc.
Our mobiles are Maxon 4150's which we use in our trucks and for our local dispatchers was all by donation from Whittmann near Phoenix. Our portables are all Bendix Kings which were donated by Forestry and our repeater was both bought and donated. We dont use pagers but we do have a paging system where we can be "toned out" by anyone that has a telephone and our dispatchers here can also use "tone remote transmitters" that we issue to them to activate our outdoor siren and our calls mainly come by radiotelephone which we can answer through our portable radios.

Anyways to answer your question, it really can get VERY expensive but yet if you know the correct channels you can get by VERY cheaply.
Im not sure exactly how the Montana laws are regarding Private Providers but it may be something interesting to research on, and i am willing to try and help as much as i can.
If the laws are the same in Montana as they are in Arizona regarding Private Providers then it should be relatively easy.

I can send you the laws from Bev Staddon (County Special Districts Coordinator), Randy Shurr( County District Attorney) and the laws from the State Legislature if you email me.

Mainly all the laws state anyone can start up a private service provider just as long as you dont operate in the borders of a legal district and the only IGA's that are recognized are between your Department and the individual homeowners but most of the time it is not required or even necessary unless you plan on running subscriptions or contracting the individual homeowners.

If you want your department to be dispatched by 911 then all the state(Arizona only) requires is that you have 2 communications plans. One being primary and the other being a backup. Reason for this is just in case one plan fails at any given time then they can resort to your backup plan. Mainly all they want is the telephone (or whatever your means is of taking calls) to be manned 24/7 and they want the phone to be answered by a real person and not by an answering machine or whatever. We made that mistake by having our phone being answered by machine but patched in to our radios until we got our radiotelephones and this upset the 911 administrator just a bit. :-S

[bridgecanyonfire]

Anyways, yes, our hardest area is funding and also finding volunteers. Right now we have 8 volunteers with about half of them having to work out of town alot so that only leaves us 4, maybe 5 at any given time to be available for calls. Even though we are shorthanded most of the time we will still respond, even if it is just one person making the response becuase at least that one person can call in another Department if need be. We try to stay away from SFD only because of thier Chief and his problems. If we need help on scene at anytime then we usually try to bring in Ash Fork FD. They are usually VERY easy to work with.


I hope i have answered most of your questions and to the administrator of this forum im quite sorry for running so many posts at one time.

Anyways, let me know if you have any other questions as i will try to answer them the best i can.
And dont let what i made mention of earlier about how the area is deter you from moving here. It CAN be quite interesting to live here but just be very careful of who you have dealings with.

[rambrush]

Wow lots of info, appreciate it
Yes I know Jim @ Whitman and his garage/fire station mini mart. His crew can build a truck out of nothing or he has purchased some from Rural Metro as well.
Like his station out on Patton rd never had equipment in it and the main station was used for a meeting hall.

[bridgecanyonfire]

Yup yup, I had just talked with the Chief of Morristown yesterday regarding some equipment he is donating to us and we had got into a conversation regarding Jim. Last i heard from the member of ours that i manned Station 2 with awhile back was that Morristown and Whittmann was suppose to merge and i wanted to know if it was true because of how hearsay can be. Chief Dame confirmed it but said that jim would still be around regardless of the merge of Districts, which is very good.
Chief Dame had also mentioned that Jim had bought 2 brand new pumper/tankers and is still using the older stuff as extra units or for out on the older roads. He used to have a yellowish green minipumper that we really wanted to get our hands in but Jim wouldnt let go of it but when i spoke to Chief Dame yesterday and upon his mention of merging, it may come to be that we get that minipumper, or at least we are hoping so.
He was mentioning that due to the 2 Districts merging there would possibly be alot of the older equipment on its way out. I remember back when i was manning his station(actually due to some favors i owed him) he had just gotten an older model open cab LaFrance that was moved into St 2 along with Tanker 2(the older 40s tanker/pumper). Im hoping we can get that one as well but if not then thats fine too since we should be getting the pumper off of Crown King sometime in the spring(whether too bad up there and dangerous to chance anything until after winter). Once we get that one then we will be running 2 pumpers so a third one MIGHT be a bit too much for us to keep on the road and maintain right now budgetwise. The minipumper is our biggest concern. Anyways to follow up on how you can get donations, mainly equipmentwise, we already have Departments that are still waiting on us to make the run to thier station here in the state to make the pickup on the equipment, and a couple of these will require us "cleaning out thier storage shed and keeping the equipment".Its just WHEN we can make the run. :-S

A couple of other things i want to point out that alot of people have asked is how many apparatus we are running or plan on running and that currently is 4, pumper, tanker, brush and LD rescue/squad truck(the utility). For trucks on proposal now to be put in service in near future would be the pumper from Crown King and possibly and hopefully the minipumper from Whittmann. That will be 6 in service.

Last thing is regarding the roads of Bridge Canyon, alot of people may argue that the Bridge Canyon roads are all County owned, they are not. They are owned by Republic Properties and maintained by Republic Properties. The only County maintained road is Fort Rock Road itself. In your papers that you should have recieved should be some clauses as well as other pertinent info in there regarding certain things in Bridge Canyon like locations of waterways and tanks for runoff in case of flooding, street easements and ownership/ maintenance of the subdevelopment roads. This will be the area that will mention about Bridge Canyon owning the roads and maintaining them. The only clause they have written in there is that the roads are dedicated to public use, which they would have to be so that people can get to thier properties, and the County can take over the maintainance of the roads once they are brought up to County standards in which Bridge Canyon says will possibly never happen for many years. The local salesman Stu Raymor will confirm that if needed and IF you can ever catch him in the office. LOL
One other thing that confuses alot of people in thier land purchase papers and thier taxes they get once a year is the "fire tax". This tax is nothing more than a small fee(which is usually only a few cents) that is required by the State for the Counties to collect should there ever be a fire district formation. This tax all goes into a special county Trust Fund but even tho Bridge Canyon does not satisfy the regulations for becoming a recognized District(units must be attached by at least 3 sides and cannot contain State or BLM lands)the tax must be collected. We do not recieve this tax and neither does SFD. This is just a peice of valuable info for those that may notice this tax in thier annual taxes that they pay on thier properties. I can also supply the regulations for forming a recognized fire district according to standards stated in ARS 48-291 upon the asking.
For further info, we do have a website at: http://bridgecanyonfire.tripod.com . Our by-laws and SOME other laws are listed there but dont mind some of the negativity. We are in the process of redoing the site. However be very careful as i noticed tripod has some sort of "exploit" popup that will popup on thier sites every so often and i have been complaining to Tripod about this.

[rambrush]

FYI
if the yellow mini pumper you are thinking of is a ford f350 dually, it came from rural metro out of Litchfield park used to be brush 31 I beleive.
It has been road hard lots of miles, imagine the welchs have brought it back up to snuff.
A merger would be good as Buckeye has annexed north close by and surprise is not far away.
I imagine still no fire protection out in whispering ranch and the toyota proving ground. I recall Toyota had something on site but would not respond out.
I have access to the ARS website info and can pull that.
Digging through old storage sheds sounds like a great treasure hunt.
So again thanks for the additional info.