Betsy and Larry Bivin of Millville lost their home to a fire on October 21, 2009.

By Sharyn Cornelius

Betsy and Larry Bivin lost their Sprig Way home in Millville to fire on the afternoon of Oct. 24, 2009. Betsy, who was at home when the fire started and called 911, at first believed the total loss of their residence might be due, at least in part, to the Millville Fire Protection District’s pol-icy of not requesting automatic dispatch of mutual aid engines from neighboring fire companies. But a review of the dispatch log provided by Cal Fire indicated that the system worked pretty much as it should have.

Betsy said that just after noon that Saturday while her husband was at work, she heard some-thing fall over on the porch on the east side of their 1993 double-wide mobile home, and her four-month-old border collie began to bark like crazy. As she was going to see what the dog was bark-ing at, she heard a loud explosion; and by the time she opened the front door, the porch was on fire. She slammed the door shut, grabbed the phone and ran out the back door. After she called 911 to report the fire, she realized her dog had not followed her outside, so she went back into the house to try to find it, but the smoke drove her out.

The first fire truck to arrive was Engine 21 from Millville Fire Protection District which reached the scene at 12:26 p.m., 14 minutes after being dispatched at 12:12 p.m., but it was staffed only by a single volunteer firefighter. Fortunately some of Bivin’s neighbors with fire-fighting experience had come over to help, so they manned the hoses, while the engineer operated the pump on the fire truck until more help arrived.

Bivin’s nearest neighbor Mitch Hammer made two attempts to rescue her dog that could be heard whining in the back bedroom. On the first attempt, Hammer, like Bivin herself, found the smoke too thick, so they broke some windows to let the smoke escape, and he went inside again. But by this time the heat from the fire under the floor of the bedroom was too intense, and he had to give up the effort.

Millville’s call for mutual aid came at 12:16, just four minutes after its initial dispatch and 10 minutes before Engine 21 arrived at the Bivin’s house at the southern end of the District. Cal Fire Engine 2479 at the airport and Engine 32, the manned Schedule A truck stationed at Palo Cedro, were dispatched at 12:17; Engine 2479 and CDF Battalion Chief 2414 arrived on scene at 12:34, while Engine 32 arrived at 12:37 followed closely by Engine 232, staffed by Palo Cedro volun-teers. Water Tender 21 from Millville was on scene by 12:41, so the incident commander had a full complement of fire fighting equipment at the scene within 30 minutes of the 911 call. Two more water tenders arrived within the next few minutes, and Engines 4 and 8 from Redding ar-rived at 12:51.

Though Bivin could see from the dispatch log that the firefighting response to her incident had not been severely delayed by the lack of an automatic mutual aid dispatch, she still plans to ask the Millville Fire Protection District Board of Directors to reconsider their decision.