[Joey]

If you live in King County then is there a locked gate in your neighborhood that could provide an additional evacuation route if the gate was opened in response to a fire emergency? If so, when you have a chance please email me a pic and the location. Here is the reason I ask. Years ago King County installed a locked fire gate in my neighborhood NE of Redmond. On the south side of the gate is a 1/4 mile long dirt/gravel 'fire road'. The county owns the fire road strip. No doubt the county owns other locked gates that could be opened to provide additional travel routes if an area had to evacuate due to a fire. If an evacuation is ordered then the county uses a commercial product called CodeRed to produce evacuation maps. CodeRed uses data from the county GIS. The county GIS has a layer that shows "barricades" owned by the county. The address for that data is https://gisdata.kingcounty.gov/arcgis/rest/services/OpenDataPortal/transportation___base/MapServer/2212 Alas, that attribute data for that GIS layer does not have info to identify which barricades are gates. I happen to know that some barricades are solid with no way to open. The fire gate in my neighborhood is in the barricade data. At the end of this post is a GISsurfer map and the fire gate closest to our home is just above the center of the map. Currently, a CodeRed evac map is not going to show an evac route via the fire gate in my neighborhood since that data is not in the county GIS. I suspect the situation is exactly the same for other fire gates the county owns. I have recently traded email with King County emergency management King County GIS Redmond Fire Fire District 34. Basically they all told me to go talk to someone else. Kinda hard to believe given the Maui fire. I intend to keep poking at this, hence my request for pics of other fire gates in King County. And just to be clear, if the local gate needs to be opened in an emergency then my neighborhood has the ability to open the gate. Opening the gate is not the issue. Instead, the issue is showing this road option on any evacuation map for this area. View larger size in new window

[BW]

Good luck on the project; it's worthwhile.

[Pyrites]

Have you looked at your plat map? I would not be surprised if the secondary access is marked Tract X, similar to a storm water retention pond. Quite a few multi-family complexes also have a secondary, normally restricted, access. If the local FD gives you a ‘Huh’ response it’s that in the past most common use is an extended 2nd-alarm fire located at a point that blocks all access. The gate is opened so people can get to work, daycare, and generally live their lives. Less common, but first order use is bringing in additional apparatus to the incident. For reference note these connections often don’t meet normally accepted traffic design minimums. It’s pretty well accepted that if opened for residents someone with a blue light will be parked at temporary intersection. I am kind of surprised at Redmond Fire’s response. All the FD’s I know of have had well before GIS had someone assigned Maps, and someone else Pre-plans or Site Plans Lead. Often an added duty taken on by a senior FF on shift. Not typically an outward facing task. As cities we served annexed their GIS’ staff sought out our maps of new city area.

[Joey]

We do not live in a subdivision, hence there is no plat map. We are in the unincorporated area. Our 5 acres is a metes and bounds description that was split out from a section of land. For many years I worked in the real estate field and have lots of experience dealing with issues involving who owns what.

[sarbar]

We had a fire gate in Katesridge, in Maple Valley. We as a neighborhood had no ability to open it (it connected a short section of unpaved road to an older neighborhood. Then hit pavement and came out at Lake Wilderness. The city used to move traffic during city events sometimes or to get to emergencies if needed). I used to use it to walk across town to save distance.

[Joey]

Progress! Got an email saying KC Roads is going to research the fire road and gate in my neighborhood and report back in a couple of weeks. I am working to leverage that into Roads agreeing to do the same for other county owned gates elsewhere in the wildland urban interface. Ultimately my goal is to have those routes appear on any evacuation map the county produces. Stay tuned...