Fire chief explains exemption for councilman's house By MATT KAPKO Half Moon Bay Review November 24, 2004 Half Moon Bay Fire Protection District board members heard last week that City Councilman Jim Grady was granted a waiver of California Fire Code requirements when he built a new home on Miramontes Avenue over the course of 2002 and 2003. The code requires any new home built on a dead-end street to be within 200 feet of a fire hydrant. Grady's home is on a cul-de-sac, 285 feet away from the nearest hydrant at the intersection of Miramontes and Ocean avenues. By code, the new home would require the installation of a new fire hydrant. Grady said that he wasn't a councilman when he first began planning for the home. "There were no favors from anyone anywhere in the process," he said. "My understanding is that they made the proper reviews as part of the building permit review." City Attorney Adam Lindgren also said Grady wasn't given any special treatment or priority because of his status. Grady's project had all the "predictable hiccups," he said, adding that this issue falls primarily within the jurisdiction of the fire district. "To the extent that there is a suggestion being made that ... Jim Grady received politically motivated special treatment ... it is my strong belief that that has not been the case at all," Lindgren said. Half Moon Bay Fire Protection District Chief Jim Asche granted Grady a waiver of the fire code requirements in a March 25, 2003 letter. That letter overruled the district's first communication with Grady, which came in a March 11, 2002, letter from then-Fire Marshal James McGee. McGee stated that the project would require the installation of a new fire hydrant precisely because of its distance from the closest existing hydrant. The issue resurfaced at the district's board meeting Nov. 16 following Half Moon Bay resident Larry Kay's request for documents related to the project. "Although the new home was to be on a cul-de-sac, the fire marshal was requiring the 250-foot distance rather than 200 feet," Asche wrote in a letter to the board. Regardless of which prerequisite was enforced on the project, Grady's home misses the required distance by at least 35 feet. "It was my opinion that allowing an additional 35 feet, or even 85 feet, spacing between the hydrant and the property ... has not jeopardized fire safety in any manner," Asche concluded in his letter to the board. By the time Asche had granted the waiver, following a request from Grady, the construction of the new home was already completed. The issuance of building permits is typically contingent on fire code requirements being met, or waived, prior to construction. The 4,261-square-foot home would also have required the installation of an automatic sprinkler system per fire district ordinance had hydrant flows not exceeded 1,750 gallons per minute. Asche's letter to the city's planning and building department states that existing hydrant flow exceeds that flow requirement, thus exempting Grady's home from the sprinkler requirement, but there are no records indicating flow tests on the hydrant in question. Asche was on vacation last week and unavailable for comment. Coastside County Water District performed a flow test on a hydrant at the intersection of Miramontes and Potter avenues - about a block east of Grady's home - on May 11, 1999, which showed hydrant flow at 2,095 gallons per minute. "We have no test data on the hydrant at Miramontes and Ocean (avenues)," CCWD General Manager Ed Schmidt wrote in a letter to the Review regarding the flow tests. The Half Moon Bay fire district adopted its automatic sprinkler ordinance for residences greater than 3,600-square feet in early 2003, as the construction of Grady's home was wrapping up, Asche told the district's board of directors. Asche said if he had required the installation of a new fire hydrant near Grady's home it would have been on the end of the hydrant's line. Because of that, he said he wouldn't have been sure that the hydrant flow would continue to meet the requirement. "This whole argument is over really less than one length of fire hose," said Tim Moran, the board's president. As a precaution and to help battle fires in areas developed prior to the more stringent regulations, each fire engine in the district carries at least 500 feet of fire hose. Director Jerry Donovan asked Asche a hypothetical question: What if someone requests a waiver for an even greater distance from a fire hydrant? The district gets such requests quite frequently, Asche said, adding that it rarely grants waivers on the regulations. Home