Protecting Shelter Island from fire
To mark Fire Prevention Week, October 3 to 9, the Reporter is looking at the Shelter Island Fire District, its resources, and how it fights fire on an Island with no pressurized water supply.
Second Assistant Chief John D’Amato estimated that the district responds to 125 to 135 calls per year. “Most of our fire calls are smaller kitchen fires, small electrical fires, brush fires, the kind of things that you can put out relatively easily and don’t cause lots of damage. Or we get false alarms.” But as a general rule of thumb, he said, there’s one serious fire per year.
In order to fight any fire, you’ll need water, and the district has a number of ways of getting it to the scene. The first line of defense are the fire trucks that arrive first on the scene and carry water with them.
The attack trucks, or engines, are the primary means of extinguishing a fire, and the supply tankers behind them provide additional water to the attack trucks. Mr. D’Amato explained, “Generally you have one engine hooked up and you have the 2,000-gallon tanker behind it, so you have 3,000 gallons of water. That’s more than adequate to put out 99 percent of the house fires that we run up against.”
But it’s not always enough. What makes fighting fires on Shelter Island difficult, Fire Chief William Rowland said, is the fact that there’s no hydrant system (outside of the Heights). “We have to rely on going into the bay or sometimes around a lake or Fresh Pond or a swimming pool.”
The district also uses fire cisterns and fire wells. There are currently 10 fire cisterns on the Island ready for use: 3 on Big Ram Island, 2 in Dering Harbor, 4 in the Center and 1 in Silver Beach. There are also 17 fire wells. 4 of those wells need a truck to provide electric power and pumping to draw water (draft wells), while the other 14 are powered supply wells.
Over the years, the district has shifted from installing fire wells to installing cisterns — fire cisterns are much easier to maintain than the wells, said Mr. D’Amato. “Wells need to be checked regularly,” every month or two, he said. “With a cistern, you fill it up, check it up once a year for evaporation, and life’s good.”
There are two ways fire cisterns are installed: the fire district pays to have one installed every year, funded from the tax levy. Also, developers are often required by the Planning Board to install them in subdivisions that have lots further than 1,000 feet from a water source. A Town Board hearing on codifying a cistern requirement for minor subdivisions is scheduled for October 22.
The district has been installing fire cisterns for the past five or six years, Chief Rowland told the Reporter, and is in the process of soliciting for bids on a new one. The fire chiefs meet with the fire commissioners to decide where to install them, generally in the area of the Island that has the least available steady source of water.
On deciding whether to tap a cistern during a fire, Mr. D’Amato said, “It’s a judgement call, and it’s based on what’s happening at the time.” For instance, during the Island’s last serious fire in Dering Harbor, he said they didn’t use a cistern because they were so close to the water, an unlimited source of water. “We knew we needed to be at the bay because we had a pretty involved fire — we didn’t bother with a cistern.”
So far, the cisterns have rarely been tapped. Mr. D’Amato said that he does not recall ever working a fire in which a cistern was used. One was opened during a fire on Ram Island, Commissioner Bill Hallman told the Reporter.
But the department does not want to rely on bay water in every situation, Mr. D’Amato said — the bay isn’t always the nearest source of water for firefighters to reach, and the more water they can throw on a fire before reaching the bay, the better.
Aside from getting water to the fire, there are other considerations. Chief Rowland explains, “The Heights is a big problem because [the houses] are so close to each other. It’s a chief’s worst nightmare that anything in the Heights would burn, because even though they have a viable water system in the Heights, it’s just that every structure is on top of each other.”
A more recent challenge is newer construction techniques. “A lot of the commercial buildings and some of the new modern buildings that are going up have trusses in the ceiling, and they burn a lot quicker.”
Some residents create problems for themselves. “Driveways at new homes are aesthetically beautiful but not practical” for emergency access, Chief Rowland explained. Occasionally a gate will be locked when the department responds; that happened recently but the police had the access code. House number visibility is also an issue. “Those five minutes we spend running up and down some long private road trying to find the house can make a lot of difference,” Mr. D’Amato said.
Despite their challenges, the department’s got the equipment they need to do the job. Chief Rowland explained, “Equipment-wise, we are very good. The district is very good to us firemen, they understand what we need and they go out of their way to provide what we need. I have no complaints there at all, none at all.”
Not to mention the many brave and committed volunteers, who are on call, day and night, ready to fight Island fires.
