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Located in the southeast
portion of Sacramento County, Sloughhouse has been known to most area
residents for its corn and Christmas tree farms along State Route 16, also
known as the Jackson Highway. Both a farming valley and fertile floodplain
for two local rivers, the Sloughhouse area is a portion of Sacramento County
that has not only witnessed California’s gold rush history, but has also
seen its share of fires and floods. From 1947 until 1990, the area was
protected from fire, flood and other emergencies by the employees of the
Sloughhouse Fire Protection District.
The Sloughhouse Fire
Protection District was formed in 1947 after area residents Percy Westerberg
and Clifford Ledbetter discussed some of the region’s serious fires.
Westerberg donated $500 to start the paperwork and soon more fire protection
was in place for the residents and farmers of the 47 square mile Sloughhouse
area.
The District started with
volunteers and donated equipment but soon bought its first piece of
equipment in 1952, a Ford/Van Pelt 400 GPM combination pumper. In addition
to the Van Pelt, Sloughhouse provided its own apparatus, which the
firefighters built by placing pumps and water tanks on surplus military
equipment. Without a formal fire station, the Van Pelt and other apparatus
were located at various homes, such as the Riella Ranch and the Sloughhouse
Grocery Store until 1965. This was when District volunteers built what is
now known as Fire Station 58 on Sloughhouse Road. Guy Rutter was promoted to
Fire Chief in 1965, a position that he held until the District’s
reorganization with the American River Fire Protection District in 1990.
The old Sloughhouse fire
season usually consisted of large wildland fires that burned longer and
farther than we see today, thanks in part to the increased resources
provided by Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District. The California Department
of Forestry (CDF) was a frequent visitor and employees from both agencies
worked over the years to match training and tactics. The region also hosted
some literal barn burners as the occasional hop yard drying barn would go up
in flames and firefighters could only utilize the limited water supplies to
keep the infernos from burning down nearby homes. All of these incidents
were dangerous for responding firefighters and the community was stunned
when one of its own was lost on a fatal on-duty incident.
On the evening of
September 29, 1978, Sloughhouse Volunteer Firefighter Kip Bollig was killed
while arriving first-in to a wildland fire on Kiefer Boulevard, west of
Sunrise Boulevard. The fire was in the middle of a field and Firefighter
Bollig exited the open cab Van Pelt to clear the fence line for the engine
to access the fire. Kip stepped directly onto a downed, energized power
line. Despite efforts by his partner to pull him off the line with a pike
pole, Kip died immediately. A memorial to Kip Bollig was built at Fire
Station 58.
Considerable geographical
growth occurred for Sloughhouse Fire in both the 1960’s and early 1970’s.
The District expanded its borders and took in the Michigan Bar Fire
Department along with other areas, then referred to as “no man’s land,”
which were not served by any fire agency. This expansion also included the
largest residential development in the District, the Rancho Murrieta
Community, which later provided Sloughhouse with Fire Station 59. The
original “communication system” was a telephone call to the volunteer’s
homes advising them of the fire’s location. In the late 1970’s, Sloughhouse
worked with the Florin, Pacific and Fruitridge Fire Districts to form a
regional Communications Center.
It was in the 1970’s that
the District applied for CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act)
funds to hire firefighters and establish a full-time Fire Chief position. By
the time the CETA program ended in 1983, the District’s budget had become
self-supportive enough to maintain staffing, add new apparatus, and start an
ambulance service. Adding an ambulance for Sloughhouse Fire was not easy
after the passage of the tax limiting Proposition 13 in 1979. However, it
was important to the changing community and this prompted the District to
both hire and train existing firefighters to the EMT-II standard for this
program. During this time there were three full-time firefighters at Station
58, backed up by off-duty firefighters via Plectron and pagers. Crews could
also count on Fire Chief Rutter and volunteer Assistant Chief Robert
Courtnier to respond from their homes.
In 1984, the Rancho
Murieta Community built Station 59 at the corner of Jackson Highway and
Murieta Parkway, for the Sloughhouse Fire District to use as a fire station
and administrative headquarters. The District’s ambulance, some newly
purchased fire apparatus, and personnel moved to the new station. Station 58
was closed as a full-time staffed fire station only to open a year later,
splitting the District’s available 24-hour staffing of three to four
firefighters between the two stations.
New Sloughhouse
firefighters were sent to the Sacramento Fire Department Training Academy
for basic firefighter training. In-house training included wildland fire
operations with CDF and continuous vehicle extrication drills. While the
Sloughhouse grass fires were limited to the natural season, the often-fatal
vehicle collisions on Jackson Highway occurred year round. Before Highway 16
was both straightened and widened in the early 1990’s, it wasn’t unheard of
for CHP’s Helicopter, Lifeflight and Medic 59 to all take critically injured
patients from the same accident to Sacramento’s only trauma hospital, the
UCD Medical Center. The tell-tale sound of the original Jaws-of-Life,
donated to the District by the County in the 1970’s, advised second-in units
of the seriousness of the incident and the work being performed.
As the 1980’s came to a
close, the District found itself under an extreme financial burden with some
of its tax revenues in abeyance. This prompted the Board to examine the
reorganization opportunities with surrounding county fire agencies and CDF.
In the end, the American River Fire Protection District was chosen for the
high caliber of operation it would bring to the area. In July 1990, the
Sloughhouse Fire Protection District was dissolved and its area of service
was reorganized and provided for by the American River Fire Protection
District. The former Sloughhouse Fire District covered 111.6 square miles
with two fire stations, a staff of 18 full and part time employees, and a
cache of equipment that included four engines, four grass units, two
ambulances, a water tender and an 85’ tractor drawn tillered aerial ladder
truck.
Many thanks to former
Sloughhouse Fire Chief Guy Rutter and American River Board Member Richard
Crooks for maintaining the information gathered for the above article.
Contributed by:
Steve Turner, Former Sloughhouse Firefighter |
