just before 1 PM Friday August 6th Fire Chief Michael Kinkade was left alone at the fire station located in Downtown Forest Grove. Doing paper work and walking down the hallway to grab something for his project, Michael noticed the front door FLY open. A gentleman runs in and yells, "My wife is having a baby." Michael calmly instructs the man to go back out to his wife and he would go get the firefighters to come assist him, but at that moment he realizes that the fire engine is currently on their fifth medical call for the day. He immediately radioed for the fire engine to return to the station while rushing out to the car in the parking lot with medical gear and started to deliver the baby. It took only 4 minutes to deliver the healthy 18.5 inch tall, 6 pound 8 ounce baby boy. In the mean time, the tones were going off for the seventh call of the day which happened to be a commercial fire in town. Michael requested that Firefighter/Paramedic Tony Carter stay to help transfer the mother and new born child to the awaiting Metro West ambulance while the rest of the fire engine crew responded to the fire. After the transfer of mother and son had occurred and were on the way to the hospital, Chief Kinkade and Firefighter Carter then responded to the fire which luckily turned out to be very minor.
Chief Kinkade stated that this was his 29th delivery of a child while working in the emergency services field. But this was the first time he had to do a delivery completely on his own with out a fire engine crew or ambulance to be readily available to help. It just goes to show that emergencies happen everywhere, even at the fire station.
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