Station No. 8 to reopen after remediation process
Mountain View Fire Rescue Station No. 8 is close to reopening after being shut down since May 2022 due to foundational issues and the building being considered hazardous.
The building closed on May 13 and staff and equipment were transferred to other rescue stations. A recent tweet by the MVFR showed that the station has gone through renovations.
Jeff Webb, Mountain View Fire Rescue deputy chief of support services, said that the station will have a full crew when it opens again in mid to late March. He added that the opening of the station is weather dependent, as the concrete has to cure properly.
Webb said that the building was built on expansive clay soils that “lived up to their name.” He said that the clay pushed the concrete around the building upwards which made water run downwards into the basement, crawlspace and baseboards of the building. Webb said that the trapped water and moisture created mold that was hazardous to the crew.
“The building was actively trying to destroy itself,” Webb said.
He said at one point the driveway had risen 4 inches above the building. He noted that the fire truck had to climb up onto the driveway. The rising concrete also caused doors to not openand that one of the sliding glass doors was bowed due to the pressure of it being compressed.
James Wood, captain at MVFR, used to work at Station No. 8 before it had to shut down. He transferred over to the MVFR training division shortly before the station closed. Wood said that the concrete by the garage was rising, and fire trucks had to have a “running start to get over that bump.”
“There were sometimes where if you didn’t have enough acceleration coming out of it, you would hit the bump and bounce back,” Wood said.
Wood also said that over his time at the station, some doors were slowly unable to open fully and “you had to turn sideways to walk through.” He said that this would cause problems for the fire rescue team, who had to be able to move quickly without the worry of doors not opening.
Wood said that the crew was resilient to the struggles and found solutions, but the problems got worse over time. He said that the crew used a grinder to move the concrete down so that the door could open properly and paint along bumps in bright yellow so that the crew would not trip.
“We tried to mitigate as long as we could until it finally got to a point where there was a breaking point,” Wood said.
Wood said the “breaking point” was the water line being pinched and the sewer line cracking, which caused sewage to collect underneath the building for a brief time. He said that the station was no longer a safe place for the crew to live.
K.P. Kauffman, an independent oil and gas company, was issued a $1.9 million fine, suspended from selling its products and required to clean production sites by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission on Feb. 15.
According to an oil and gas notification Wednesday from the town of Erie, KPK must complete remediation on the 58 sites that were included in the remediation plan, 25 of which are in Erie. If the fine is not paid and remediation is not complete within all sites in six months, KPK could lose the right to conduct business in Colorado.
During a COGCC Feb. 27 meeting, John Jacus, a representative with KPK, requested more time to shut down its wells. Jacus said that “without the ability to sell its production and hence no revenue, and with a $2 million penalty imposed on it, this assertion is implausible on its face.”
The commission denied KPK’S appeal.
The commission decided Feb. 1 that KPK had not made substantial progress on a November 2021 compliance plan that addressed the oil company’s previous violations. KPK had continued to sell oil and gas despite the Feb. 15 order to suspend production, said Caitlin Stafford, the assistant attorney general representing commission staff, in the press release.
Stafford said that KPK agreed to the compliance plan. She also said that KPK