Editor’s note: A paragraph in this story on response times and units responding to a Dec. 11 trailer fire on the south edge of Waldport has been updated and corrected.
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
Thirteen years of three small local fire districts helping each other out when responding to calls could end in mid-January because of philosophical and operational differences.
In the case of the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District, it is also because its administrator initially declined last month to give a proposed new agreement to the district board to even see or discuss.
Because of the size of the rural area from Seal Rock to Waldport to Yachats and staffing, firefighters and volunteers from three departments often rely on each other for help when responding to many calls.
Mutual aid is a countywide arrangement by Lincoln County fire chiefs that establishes a response for backup support if an emergency cannot be handled by one district. It is not affected by Central Coast’s proposed new automatic aid agreement.
Automatic aid is different. It’s a contract between two districts requiring each to automatically respond to the other’s emergency calls and designed improve response times for fires, vehicle accidents, or high-priority medical calls.
Due to its central location and staffing, firefighters from the Waldport-based Central Coast Fire & Rescue District often help with calls to the south in Yachats or to the north in Seal Rock. Pacific West Ambulance covers medical calls in the Seal Rock and Central Coast districts.
Now the Central Coast board is asking their counterparts in Seal Rock and Yachats to sign an agreement that updates one dating to 2011. That’s because it feels the Salem-based dispatch service they all use needs more detailed instructions on who and what equipment to send on most calls. Without more detailed instructions, says COCF&R Chief Jamie Mason, the old document could leave districts vulnerable to misunderstandings, wasted resources and lawsuits.
The Central Coast board sent a letter to Yachats and Seal Rock in November giving their chiefs and boards two month’s notice that the “automatic aid” agreement with it would expire Jan. 17 if they did not sign one of two suggested documents – or meet to come up with a different document.
The Seal Rock Fire District board voted Dec. 21 to not sign it and instead respond to all calls in its district with its one full-time firefighter and a cadre of 19 volunteers it has developed the last two years.
The Yachats Rural Fire Protection Board did not consider the agreement at its Dec. 11 meeting because administrator Frankie Petrick did not show it to the board until pressed at the end of the meeting to provide copies. But she never explained the old or proposed new agreement and the board never discussed it. The Yachats fire board next meets Monday, Jan. 8.
Petrick said she believes the suggested new automatic aid agreements are due to a 2-year-old political and operational dispute between the Central Coast and Seal Rock boards and fire chiefs.
“There are big differences between the Central Coast board and the Seal Rock board,” she told the Yachats board in December. “I wish to stay out of their problems.”
Instead, Petrick told the board, the Yachats district can keep operating under the 2011 automatic aid agreement with just the Seal Rock district and not rely on help from Central Coast.
That could be problematic for some of the 50-90 emergency calls a month in the Yachats district, which stretches from the south edge of Waldport, through the city of Yachats, up the Yachats River valley and south past Cape Perpetua.
Yachats’ two on-duty firefighter/paramedics are regularly out of the area as they staff South Lincoln Ambulance, a private nonprofit controlled by Petrick and assistant district administrator Shelby Knife. When the ambulance is on a call, the Yachats district relies on Central Coast to respond first to emergencies.
A good example is such a call Dec. 11 – at the same time the Yachats board was holding its last meeting of 2023.
Yachats, Central Coast and Seal Rock were all dispatched about 11:20 a.m. to a fire in a trailer park on the south edge of Waldport – but within the Yachats fire district.
A Central Coast command vehicle and engine arrived in less than four minutes to begin work on what turned out to be a small fire inside a trailer. A Seal Rock rescue unit, but not an engine as stated in the 2011 automatic aid agreement, arrived after 5 minutes. The first Yachats engine arrived in 9 minutes and 24 seconds with a single volunteer firefighter. A second Yachats engine with two firefighters arrived 12 minutes, 24 seconds after dispatch.
Mason believes many such calls for service in the Yachats district could be in jeopardy without a new agreement.
“What if the Yachats guys are in the ambulance taking someone to Florence and they get a call and COCF&R isn’t automatically responding anymore?” he asked. “Is the public going to be OK with that?
“This is literally putting on paper what we’re really doing today – not what was going on in 2011,” Mason said. “It has nothing to do with what’s going on with Seal Rock.”
Mason says the Central Coast board wants to get in writing how the three agencies are currently being dispatched – not under a 13-year-old agreement, especially if a firefighter, volunteer or victim is injured or equipment damaged during a response using old protocols.
“Any attorney who knows anything about automatic aid or mutual aid can pick that 2011 agreement apart,” he said. “I’m not going to put our district in jeopardy.”
Seal Rock v COCF&R
But there is plenty of tension between the Seal Rock and Central Coast boards and chiefs.
It has its origins in a 2020 intergovernmental agreement between the two agencies under a former Seal Rock chief and board that had them sharing personnel and equipment. That eventually led to a campaign to oust most Seal Rock board members, dismiss chief Tom Sakaris and move from a paid staff of four firefighters to a mostly volunteer department – and cancel the intergovernmental agreement.
Tensions went even higher when several Seal Rock board members worked with three former Central Coast board members in the spring of 2022 to try to oust Mason from his job. Voters recalled two of those Central Coast board members in June 2022 and its chair resigned in support.
The Central Coast board now has four new members who support Mason in getting up-to-date automatic aid agreements with neighboring districts. But they have repeatedly said they believe COCF&R taxpayers are too often subsidizing the Yachats and Seal Rock districts by responding to so many of their calls.
In late 2021 the new Seal Rock board brought in former Toledo and Idanha-Detroit fire chief Will Ewing to consult and then hired him as chief in 2022. Their instructions were to reduce paid staff and develop a strong volunteer program.
As expressed during meetings the past 18 months, the majority of the Seal Rock board simply believe their organizational philosophies – extensive use of volunteers to keep its budget as low as possible — no longer fit that of Central Coast’s.
That led to disagreements between Ewing and Mason and their boards on the direction of the others’ departments, and especially how Seal Rock growing number of volunteers should be trained and certified.
While Central Coast and Yachats firefighters and volunteers regularly train together, the Seal Rock and Central Coast staff and volunteers no longer do.
It is unclear what the effect on homeowner fire insurance rates would be without Seal Rock having an automatic aid agreement with Central Coast. In August 2022 Ewing told his board that insurances rates are based on an automatic aid agreement, not the old intergovernmental agreement.
Ewing told the Seal Rock board at its Dec. 21 meeting that he believes his department can now handle most emergencies in its district.
“The need on this end is not as great as it used to be,” he said. “I’m not in support of signing the automatic aid agreement right now.”
The main board advocate of Seal Rock going its own way is Paul Rimola, its longest-serving member.
He has resisted efforts by new board member Dave Pelligrinelli to seek mediation with the Central Coast board and has repeatedly publicly attacked Mason over his motives and the Central Coast board’s response to a July 2 accident involving Mason’s wife just inside the Seal Rock district.
Pushing back against Pelligrinelli’s efforts at a November board meeting, Rimola went through a 20-minute Power Power presentation on his version of events the past three years, changes the Seal Rock district has made and then attacked the Central Coast board and Mason.
“We have to protect ourselves first,” Rimola said in November. “We now have a great fire department … but this didn’t happen without a lot of blood, sweat and tears.”
That led to just a brief discussion at Seal Rock’s December board meeting – and more criticism by Rimola, who said the district should just keep the 2011 automatic aid agreement in place with just the Yachats district.
“We didn’t cancel the automatic aid agreement. They did,” said Rimola said of Central Coast. “…that’s intimidation far as I’m concerned. The cultures are now so different. We can’t rectify that.”
- Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
Thank you for this informative article, Yachats News!
This issue reflects concerns I’ve had as a county resident whose property taxes support the Yachats fire district and Oregon forest fire response (Yachats fire district is a first responder for forest fires until the state arrives).
I prefer clear agreements backed by the commitment to respond, as described in the contract. I can understand the Central Coast’s desire to also have legally clear details and documentation.
Here are my main concerns that I would like to see clear, detailed, documentation for managing:
1) 9-1-1 calls and data.
I have observed the vague categories and descriptions of data collected based on emergency calls from 2022 data I was provided by the Yachats fire district .
2) Subsidizing the tourism industry.
When viewing the vague data from the 9-1-1 calls, although there aren’t clear and specific categories for calls to rental/hotel/visitor/non-resident emergencies, through deduction, it appears to me that overall, most of the Yachats district calls are for the ambulance service (thus our fire district funds are mostly paying for medical, not fire, responsiviness), and the majority of the fire calls are for vehicles and campfires of tourists, not the residents who pay these taxes.
3) Fire Dept. should be available for fires.
My biggest concern was experienced by friends last year when their home (outside of the Yachats district, but with a Yachats address) burned due to slow and insufficient response by any fire department.
4) Lack of well written plans for responding to house and forest fires.
For over 15 years I’ve been asking for a written “plan” for responding to a fire at my or my neighbor’s homes, and to this day that plan does not exist…only ideas and suppositions. And, although I requested that they test their idea, this action was never taken. When I requested information about the number of residences covered by the Yachats fire district outside the 5 mile radius of the main station in Yachats, specifically beyond the 4-mile marker on the Yachats River Road, they answered that they didn’t have access to that data. Well, overnight I put together a spreadsheet for them with every resident, name/s, address, acreage, taxes paid (and % that contributed to the Yachats fire District, all from the online county records that everyone that has access to the internet can find) and handed it to them the next morning. This is an important detail I would think they would already have. Plus, it shows how many people and properties are not being served by the “East” fire station…and thus must wait longer, critical minutes of time, for any house or forest fire to be managed…if they are not already out on a medical call.
We need well-written documents, and sound plans and strategies for the fire protection that local taxpayers are supposedly paying for…not just a subsidy for the tourism industry and discounted medical costs through the ambulance services.
Thank you for considering these concerns and the importance of transparency and accuracy when making contractual agreements between entities…in this case, the taxpayers and the recipient of those funds…the Yachats fire district….and now with our neighbors in Waldport.
If it is true administrator Frankie Petrick “did not show it to the board until pressed at the end of the meeting to provide copies,” and Petrick may somehow have a financial interest (South Lincoln Ambulance), something doesn’t smell right. Full transparency and discussion necessary at next Yachats meeting.
Frankie Patrick should have retired when Shelby Knife was brought in as her replacement. I cannot ever trust a fire chief that has a financial attachment to the ambulance, bought the new fire station property from a relative, has used firefighters on duty to tend to her personal property. Too many Chiefs as they say. One consolidated fire department eliminates this.
In regards to the portion of this article referencing the December 11 trailer park fire, review of radio traffic from broadcastify.com indicates the Central Coast Fire chief and engine arriving 3m17s and 3m45s, respectively, after dispatch, the Seal Rock Fire rescue unit arriving 5m03s after dispatch, the first Yachats engine arriving 9m24s after dispatch, and a second Yachats engine arriving 12m44s after dispatch. The article claims “Yachats’ firefighter/paramedics were not available”, yet it appears that they were, given that two Yachats engines responded. The article also claims that “Seal Rock arrived 21 minutes later with a rescue rig”, but again, the radio traffic indicates that it took them just over 5 minutes to arrive. Can the author of this article explain the above discrepancies?