Fire Department – City of Woodland MN

The Wayzata Fire Department has 30 members, all volunteers, who individually train an average of 75 hours per year.

The department has eight vehicles including two pumper trucks each carrying a minimum of 1000 gallons of water and life saving equipment, a tanker truck carrying 1850 gallons of water, a ladder and bucket truck, and a rescue truck with extensive rescue and life saving equipment as well as a sizable boat, moored on Lake Minnetonka, with pumping capability.

The trucks carrying water have the capability to mix a foaming substance with the water, which increases the fire suppressant capability by a multiple of five (5,000 effective gallons of water carried in one truck); this capability alone can extinguish a substantial fire in a 3,000-4,000 sq. ft. house, comparable to the vast majority of all residential fires.

The Wayzata Fire Department has a mutual aid agreement with surrounding communities to supplements its capability, when needed.

Learn more at the Wayzata Fire Department website.

Delivery of Fire Service

Each fire department volunteer receives a pager alert from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s tower when a 911 call is received directly from a resident or from a private alarm service contracted by the homeowner. The police receive this same alert and are often the first to arrive. Fire fighters report to the Wayzata fire station, load into engines and proceed to the alarm site.

Fire calls are often cancelled en route before the fire trucks arrive at the residence yet Woodland is responsible for that fire call and the resident/property owner is charged for a portion of the alarm activation’s cost.

The severity of the fire is immediately assessed by the first police or fire officer to arrive and additional support is called in from surrounding communities, if needed.

The Wayzata Fire Department responds to all fire calls, whether actual fires, false or unintentional fire alarms, or if cancelled en route.

Woodland residents are charged for all fire calls originating from their property, unless it is a medical emergency.

Home Security Systems

Most alarm and security systems function according to the following protocol:

The homeowners system’s responds to heat or smoke and immediately seizes the telephone line while sending the alarm to the private security system’s central station.

The central station, in turn, immediately relays an alert to the Hennepin County Sheriffs tower, which alerts the volunteer firemen and police. Thus the homeowner cannot immediately cancel the alarm by calling either his security system’s central station or the fire/police stations on the seized telephone line. If the homeowner immediately attempts to cancel the alarm over a second telephone line or with a cell phone, the effort might be fast enough to effect cancellation.

Following the above rapid sequence, the central station frees the telephone line and calls the residence in order to verify the homeowner’s presence and condition; if no one answers the telephone the central station attempts to contact persons on the homeowner’s “call list.”

The Wayzata Fire Chief and the Woodland City Council strongly recommend that Woodland residents adhere to the above protocol. Efforts to modify the sequence of events such that the central station first attempts to contact the residence in order to verify an alarm before initiating the alarm to the sheriff’s tower/firemen wastes critical time as the doubling time of a fire in it’s initial phase is one (1) minute.

Outdoor Fires/Burning of Waste Material

The City of Woodland prohibits the burning of waste material, brush, limbs or yard waste.

Recreational fires, are allowed without request or permit, provided only wood, coal or charcoal is burned.

Residential fires must be:

At least 25 feet from any structure.
Contained within a noncombustible fire ring
No larger (measured by firewood) than 36 inches in diameter or 24 inches high at any time.
Attended at all times by an adult and have a ready water source or fire extinguisher at hand.

The Deephaven Police or Wayzata Fire Department may prohibit any or all recreational fires when atmospheric conditions or local circumstances render such fires hazardous.

Examination of questionable fires and enforcement of the City’s fire ordinance is administered by the Deephaven Police.