Wildfire season is ramping up around central Oregon. We encourage everyone to sign up for emergency alerts through both Jefferson and Deschutes Alerts regardless of which county you live in. These alerts will provide important information in the event of an evolving fire incident or evacuation need here on Crooked River Ranch. You can sign up by visiting our website at crrfire.org and clicking on “Citizen Emergency Alerts”.

In June the Fire District ran 51 calls for service. This included four (4) fires, thirty-six (36) emergency medicals or rescues, five (5) service calls, and four (4) good intent calls. You can see our monthly call totals on our website at crrfire.org/2023-calls-for-service.

During early July the District responded to two unique emergency calls that were generated by Apple iPhone’s new automatic crash notification feature. Per the Apple website, “Crash detection is designed to detect severe car crashes. When a severe car crash is detected the iPhone or Apple Watch sounds an alarm and displays an alert.” If the user doesn’t respond with 20 seconds of the alert the phone automatically calls emergency services. In both instances our crews didn’t find a car crash but did locate the iPhone that created the alert alongside the road. We presume the phones were left on the outside of the vehicle and fell off while driving down the road. The phones, which were intact after the ordeal, were turned over to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office to be reunited with their owners. We want to remind everyone to double check that your phone isn’t left on the outside of your car where it could fall and trigger an unintentional alert. More information about this Apple service visit support.apple.com/en-us/HT213225.

As always if you would like to know more about CRRF&R or have comments or concerns, please drop in, call, or visit us on our social media (Facebook, Instagram, or Nextdoor). Our regular Board Meetings are on the third Thursday of the month at 6:30 pm at the fire station. These meetings are streamed via the Zoom platform and information is available on our website crrfire.org.