Fire calls increase with cold weather

Icy weather and dangerous roads have made recent days among the busiest in the last several weeks at the Spokane Valley Fire Department.

It handled 226 calls between Jan. 16 and Monday.

“Lots of those were due to weather,” said department spokesman Bill Clifford.

Vehicle accidents were up sharply with 31 reported.

Among those were crashes that involved an alleged drunken driver hitting a school bus, and a head-on collision on 32nd Avenue that sent six people to the hospital with serious injuries.

All told, ambulance crews transported 13 people from accidents that week.

Firefighters handled 11 reports of structure fires, five of which involved problems with power lines.

There were two minor vehicle fire calls and 22 fire alarm soundings. Broken water pipes were responsible for half of them.

“There’s not really a whole lot you can do with that,” Clifford said.

While homeowners can insulate vulnerable pipes and keep a trickle of water running to keep water from freezing, many of the burst-pipe calls come from unheated industrial spaces where sprinkler pipes freeze, he said.

Paramedics were dispatched to 152 emergencies, and the department also was called to two reports involving hazardous materials, Clifford said.

There were six miscellaneous service calls last week, including two incidents of people locking their kids in the car.