Crowded streets, more emergencies and a growing, aging population helped make Raleigh Hills the perfect site for Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue's first mini-station.
Staffed by two paramedics with a medical truck that looks like a rolling emergency room, Station 70 sits in a business park on Southwest Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway near Southwest Laurelwood Avenue. It opened on Oct. 1 and is expected to handle an average of 1,300 calls per year.
It's a new approach to building fire and rescue stations.
Station 70 is truly mini at 1,950 square feet compared to a standard fire station at 10,540 square feet. The station, which handles mostly medical calls, is believed to be the first of its kind in Oregon, according to the fire service. It is also working on designs for a mid-size station.
"What is placed in that station is driven by the calls that occur," said Cassandra Ulven, Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue spokeswoman. "We didn't necessarily need a full size station and truck. What we did need to do was address the medical calls by adding that two person station during the day."
The department's analysis of nearly 6,500 incidents over five years showed about 86 percent of the calls in the Raleigh Hills area were medical related. Of those, about 40 percent were for people age 80 and older.
The mini-station fills a hole between other large stations and improves response times as well. Simply adding a medical unit to fire station 65 in West Slope, which also serves the area, wouldn't have solved response problems, Ulven said.
The new station will operate during peak incident hours Tuesday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Outside of those hours, Stations 53 and 65 will respond to emergency calls.
Demographically, Raleigh Hills has the highest percentage of people age 62 and older compared to the rest of Beaverton and surrounding areas. About 20 percent of the population is near retirement age or older. In the city of Beaverton, it's about 13 percent, according to the U.S. Census.
Capt. Patrick Fale is one of the two paramedics at Station 70. "Most of the calls are medical related; chest pain, shortness of breath, falls," he said. "There are several care homes in this area."
The Raleigh Hills station cost about $1.65 million, which was funded through an existing construction bond. The staff is paid with local option levy funds. Voters approved both funding sources.
Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue has 21 standard-size stations, plus the new mini-station.
"We feel the right-resource/right-place approach will improve response times not only for West Slope and Raleigh Hills, but across the nine cities we serve as we embark on this solution," Ulven said.
The fire and rescue will be adding seven sites over the next 10 years, which will vary in size based on the demands for that area. Because so many areas are already developed, the project has been delayed because of the difficulty in finding available land.
"We can pinpoint down to the exact location where a station is ideally located to maximize response (time)," Ulven said. "But that pin-drop doesn't always align with where land is available."
-- Wendy Owen
503-294-5961