Saturday, March 25 will give local residents the opportunity to meet their Escalon firefighters, as a group will be on hand at the local Starbucks, 1255 Lillian Ave., from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.

In addition to helping serve up coffee orders, the firefighters are also scheduled to sit down and visit with residents, in a ‘Q&A’ type session. They will also have coloring books and stickers to hand out to youngsters.

Similar to the popular Coffee with a Cop events, this time the firefighters are looking forward to the opportunity to meet with residents. The coffee shop is at the corner of Highway 120 and Plaza Avenue.

Firefighters also reported a fairly busy week this past week, with calls that resulted in the closure of a portion of Highway 120 for several hours and another incident that resulted in one fatality.

An early afternoon call on Tuesday, March 14 was due to high winds and rain, as fire department responded to a report of multiple power poles and lines down along Yosemite Avenue.

The call was just before 12:30 p.m., said Battalion Chief Dan Morriss.

“We had about five power poles come down, one went down and it took several others with it, the ground was just so saturated from the rain,” Morriss explained.

The toppling of the poles forced closure of a stretch of Highway 120/Yosemite Avenue on the west side of town, with traffic detoured around the scene. Morriss said PG&E crews responded to the scene but the portion of highway was shut down for several hours and was even closed overnight while the poles were replaced.

The fatal accident was reported on Thursday, March 16 shortly before 8 p.m.; firefighters were dispatched to the 23000 block of Mariposa Road for a vehicle off the roadway. The CHP also responded and, according to the CHP report, the driver – identified by the San Joaquin County Coroner’s Office as 52-year-old Catrina Garcia of Stockton – was driving a 2014 Kia westbound on Mariposa Road west of Brennan at undetermined rate of speed. As the driver came upon a slower moving vehicle, she veered around the vehicle to the right. The Kia left the roadway and traveled across a mud/grass shoulder. The vehicle then collided with a tree and continued into a large stand of bushes where the vehicle came to rest. Garcia succumbed to her injuries on scene, according to the CHP.