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From:
"budbrinkerhoff@comcast.net"
<budbrinkerhoff@comcast.net>
To:
"Patience O'Dowd"
<patience_odowd@yahoo.com>
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Patience,
I am currently the Fire Chief for the
Placitas Volunteer Fire Brigade. I have held this position for
over 3 years and have been an officer for the Brigade for several
years prior to that.
Our Fire Department provides fire and
rescue operations for the greater Placitas area. We also
provide primary response to the Sandia Pueblo and mutual aid to
Bernalillo, Algodones and surrounding areas.
During my tenure with the Brigade, I
have never experienced a single incidence where we were unable to
respond to an emergency because we did not have an alternate route
into the community. Highway 165 services the area adequately
and has not once failed to provide access to all subdivisions and
building areas around our district. We have had occasions
where individual driveways are quite narrow and restrict access to
emergency equipment such as a fire engine or rescue vehicle.
In the evaluation of our logistics in
the event of a major catestrophic event such as a hazardous material
leak on Interstate 25 or a major pipeline rupture on one of the many
pipelines that traverse our district, we have analyzed evacuation
schemes. In the event we had a hazardous vapor cloud
originating on I25 near the Exit 242 location, in all probability,
such a cloud would disperse to the point that the most effective
public safety action would be to advise the populous to stay in
their homes with windows and doors shut and NOT attempt to evacuate
the area. It is quite a stretch of imagination to envision a
need to evacuate the Placitas region to the East or Northeast.
Even a pipeline rupture in the heart
of our district would most likely result in our department
developing a safety corridor surrounding the rupture until such time
as the pipeline company stopped the flow of material. The size
of the safety corridor would be dependent upon the gases
involved.
In the event that we found the need to
evacuate the Placitas Village and region, the use of Hwy. 165 would
accommodate such evacuation. The main 'bottleneck' to such an
evacuation would be the area where 165 joins with I25 and Hwy.
550. It would be necessary to engage law enforcement at that
location to facilitate the smooth flow of traffic out of the
Placitas region.
As the Placitas region grows it is
conceivable that the traffic flow requirements of Hwy. 165 may
necessitate the widening of that road to a 4 lane, similar to that
on Hwy. 550.
The Fire Department has NOT identified
the need for another road system either to the north or east of
Placitas Village to be necessary for us to provide adequate
fire and rescue service to the Placitas region.
Chief Bud Brinkerhoff
Placitas Volunteer Fire Brigade
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