A map of Fair Oaks Estates, a senior living community, promises it will be “a place you will be safe and proud to call home.”
Dennis Toomey, 65, does not feel safe.
“There are three fire hydrants, all three have a sign that they don’t work,” Toomey said. “Well, that freaks me out since this place burned down.”
There are more than 100 homes in the Fair Oaks Estate community, and Toomey lives on lot No. 54. In 2013, a fire scorched the former mobile home that sat on the property where his home is now. Within eyeshot of Toomey’s property, a bright red hydrant punctuates a well-manicured lawn. A sign on the hydrant reads: “Out of service.”
It might as well say, “we’re not going to fix it,” Toomey said.
“You have older people who have condensed their worldly possessions, they can’t hear well and don’t move fast,” Toomey said, adding the mobile homes are known to burn quickly and he’s not the only one worried.
One neighbor, a 68-year-old woman who has lived in the park for about six years, said knowing the fire hydrants worked would certainly give her peace of mind. She didn’t want her name used for fear of upsetting the owners.
Marvin Pratt, 85, was around in 2013, when the home on Lot 54 burned. The homes, he said, are all pretty close together.
“Well, sure, I would like to see them fixed,” he said. “I think fire hydrants are pretty nice to have.”
Louis O’ Conner, the manager of the park for the past 14 years, said when he first moved to the park, the hydrants worked. After a city test proved they were ineffective, O’Conner was told to put the signs on the hydrants.
“It’s been out of my hands since the beginning, and it’s still out of my hands,” O’Conner said.
But, he said, he was around when the mobile home burned in 2013 and first responders were quickly on the scene. He also pointed out there is a working fire hydrant on the street, not far from the property. When firefighters respond to Fair Oaks Estates, he said, they know to bring their own water.
O’Conner said the complaint has more to do with a feud over a fence that Toomey built that O’Conner wants taken down.
“He’s trying to discredit me,” the manager said.
Brian Fitterer, owner of Investment Property Group, based in Irvine, Calif., echoed O’Conner.
“If the fire department came in and said this is a huge issue and we need to figure out what to do, then yes, it would be on the to-do list,” Fitterer said. “But if a resident who needs to remove their fence and is trying to divert from needing to do what they need to do, then it’s not an issue.”
Steve Eldred, the division chief with the Vancouver Fire Department, said the fire marshal tested the system in the park in 2011. There was no water pressure.
When the trailer park was built, it was not within the city’s limits. Fitterer estimated the park was built about 45 years ago.
Now it’s within city limits, but the city has no jurisdiction over the property, Eldred said. It would be a costly project to fix, he added.
From January 2010 until today, there have been three fire-related calls to the property. Eldred confirmed responders know they need to carry water with them when responding to the park.
Each engine has 500 gallons of water on it at all times. If they bring a water tender, it has about 1,000 gallons.
“Our response is adequate for what the risk is,” Eldred said.
If the mobile home park were built today, it would be required to have at least three hydrants on a loop system that could pump at least 1,500 gallons of water per minute.
Toomey denies the dispute over the hydrants has anything to do with the fence.
“I say they are absolutely wrong; this has nothing to do with the fence and everything to do with fire protection in the park,” he said. “The place I lived in before burned down before, and they’ve made no changes since then.”
Toomey said he first started asking management about the fire hydrants last year and built the fence about six weeks ago. Toomey said he’s going to mediation over the fence with O’Conner next week.
Changing the subject to the fence, Toomey said, seems to be “a diversion on their part.”
