By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
WALDPORT – The board of the Central Coast Fire & Rescue District has issued a strong statement of support for its chief after receiving an investigator’s report about an on-duty dispute during a July 2 traffic accident involving his wife.
The board’s statement also admonished a small group of residents using social media “indulging in inflammatory, shameful untruths about the district, the chief, employees and officers.”
The board’s statement came at the end of a sometimes raucous meeting Thursday night during which the district’s main detractor spent 15 minutes during a public comment period accusing chief Jamie Mason of a variety of wrongdoings, castigated the board for not taking action, and suggested they could be recalled if they failed to act.
The board meeting was also interrupted several times when the motorcyclist’s wife, Tamara Derby of Waldport, clashed with other audience members and yelled accusations at the board.
Once outside the meeting, Derby called Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputies to accuse audience member Pattie Huggins Deitrick of assault after Deitrick pushed Derby’s hand and phone away while Derby turned around in her seat to record her.
What started it all
After a complaint to the COCF&R board at its July meeting, it voted in August to hire an investigator to sort out Mason’s response to the accident involving his wife.
Ericka Mason was pulling onto U.S. Highway 101 at North Bayview Road at 6 o’clock that morning when she swerved into the northbound lane to avoid trash in the center of the road, according to an Oregon State Police report. Damon Derby of Waldport was headed north on his motorcycle and suddenly braked and lay down his bike to avoid colliding with Mason’s vehicle.
The accident was just inside the Seal Rock Fire District’s border with Central Coast. Under a decades-old “automatic aid” agreement, Central Coast responded and got there just before a firefighter and volunteer from Seal Rock arrived.
Mason happened to be filling an open shift that morning for a firefighter out on leave.
As he and firefighter John Townley arrived, Mason let Seal Rock know he would be incident commander, as is the practice for whomever arrives first. Once he saw that his wife was involved, Mason said he took himself off the call and turned the scene over to Seal Rock Capt. Joe Munger.
But the incident turned ugly when Mason said Damon Derby and Tamara Derby, who arrived shortly after the incident in her own car, started accusing Ericka Mason of causing the wreck, calling her names and then turning on him. Jamie Mason and then the Derbys all yelled at each other and exchanged profanities before being separated.
The incident exploded into more public view when Tamara Derby showed edited video of the incident on her TikTok page and Mason’s critics used a lengthy narrative from the Seal Rock responder to criticize him and demand an investigation.
An Oregon State Police wildlife trooper who was nearby was dispatched to the accident. Trooper Maleri Cates, a former Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputy, cited Ericka Mason for failing to drive within a lane. In her report, Cates wrote that when she arrived Jamie Mason and Damon Derby were hugging and apparently apologizing on the roadside.
But, Cates’ report also said that Derby later that morning tried to buy insurance for his motorcycle after showing her an insurance card at the scene that she discovered later during her investigation was only for his truck.
Derby refused medical treatment, but later went to the emergency room at Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport.
Later that day Mason called the COCF&R board chair and vice chair to let them know of the incident and in a later statement to YachatsNews apologized for swearing.
As part of its regular monthly meeting Thursday, the board held an executive (closed) session to read the investigator’s report. It returned to open session and voted to release its statement and to make public the investigator’s report this week once their attorney makes some grammatical edits.
Critics pounce
The district’s critics have set up a local Facebook page to air their criticisms of Mason, district personnel and operations.
Thursday night they widened their attacks to include the physical condition of several firefighters, and compare Central Coast to the lower-budget and mostly volunteer department in Seal Rock.
Jamie Harley, with the help of recalled board member Todd Holt, was the first to speak. She referenced recent news stories of financial embezzlement in some Oregon fire districts, the difficulty in getting her records requests filled, firefighter fitness, and what she termed a “culture of disrespect” in the district.
She accused Mason of a litany of offenses, said the district “is in shambles” and that the board needed to step up to correct issues.
“Who has to die before the board takes action?” she asked. “Either step up or you will be recalled.”
Harley, who moved to Waldport in 2021 and has become a critic of the district, promotes herself as a skilled researcher. She is a former California defense attorney disbarred there in 2014 after her license was suspended three previous years. In 2015 she was sentenced to two years in prison following a 2010 conviction in federal court for money laundering.
Board member John MacCulloch tried to cut Harley off at one point when she attacked firefighter fitness, saying she had “no business” criticizing district personnel and that all its firefighters have passed required fitness tests.
Susan Swander, a member of the district’s budget committee and moderator of another Waldport Facebook page, was the only audience member to speak Thursday night in support of the district and board.
“I feel safe and am grateful for all the work you do for the community,” she said, and encouraged the board to “ignore the rabble rousers.”
That comment angered Tamara Derby, who turned from her chair in the front row to record Swander and Deitrick in the second row, and then started yelling that Deitrick assaulted her.
Derby left the meeting, called 9-1-1 to report the incident, drawing a response from Deputy Abby Dorsey and later Sgt. Rick Ballentine. Derby later had to be escorted away after she tried to record Dorsey’s interview with a distraught Deitrick.
Defends chief, criticizes critics
In its statement, the COCF&R board said it had “unqualified gratitude” for Mason’s leadership. A previous board hired him in 2021 after it finally forced out the previous chief for sending pornography to district employees.
The board’s statement praised Mason’s work to win hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and upgrade equipment, to finish the Tidewater substation after years of inaction, working to get a new firefighter union contract, and his collaboration and management skills.
The board said when it decided Aug. 3 to seek an outside investigation of the July incident they hoped the public would wait until it was finished and made public before deciding how they felt.
“… instead we were disturbed to find a few community members felt the need to continue to attack the district and its employees and officers with unfounded and, as it turns out, verifiably false information even as the investigation was underway,” it said. “We deplore this attempt to use the media to defame a valuable district employee, and we urge the public to disregard statements made by clearly biased and manipulative sources.”
The board’s statement said investigator’s report of the July 2 accident, in summary, shows “that while Chief Mason did use some profanity in some heated exchanges in what was a personally very stressful situation, there is no evidence that racial or defamatory language was used.”
The board also said there was no indication to influence the state police trooper who responded “to alter the facts, as was alleged in the complaint.”
“Although our faith in Chief Mason never wavered, the board did initiate the investigation,” the statement said. “In the time since then, Chief Mason, his staff, and family members have had to endure continued harassment that they could not defend themselves from while the investigation was underway. Our firefighters respected the investigation process even at great personal cost. We hope this community will now rally behind our firefighters in a way that will help heal the hurt that has been caused by this entire situation.
“We encourage the public to come to meetings, ask questions, show support,” the statement said. “What can’t be tolerated anymore is the steady drumbeat of a disgruntled few indulging in inflammatory, shameful untruths about the district, the chief, employees and officers. It’s not good for the district or the community as a whole. We ask that you join us in refusing to accept such behavior.”
- Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
I do not know enough one way or another to say if Mason is doing a good job. But his behavior during the accident was clearly wrong and I don’t see one word in the story from the board indicating that they thought it was wrong. Their blanket defense seems inappropriate. Of course the motorcyclist driving without insurance should be cited for that.