Yachats fire district increases staff pay as it — and most coastal departments — scrambles to hire and keep firefighters and paramedics

 

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com

YACHATS – When Yachats firefighters reported for duty this month they started working under a new wage scale designed to keep them happy – and not lured away to another job.

The board of the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District aggressively increased firefighter pay last month to attract new staff and keep current ones from moving to other districts or ambulance companies also scrambling to hire employees.

The move reflects the increasing demand for firefighters across Oregon – especially those with paramedic or emergency medical technician certifications – and the difficulty of attracting them to the Oregon coast.

The Yachats fire district budgets for six paid firefighters. Because it also staffs the nonprofit South Lincoln Ambulance, it needs to employ three firefighter/paramedics and three firefighter/EMTs. But it has struggled the past year to find that third firefighter/paramedic – putting extra strain on its two remaining firefighter/paramedics to fill shifts.

In December the fire district board gave a 6 percent cost-of-living wage increase to seven eligible employees, a raise the board routinely awards to match the previous year’s rate of inflation.

But as it struggled to fill 1-2 open positions, district administrators discovered that it still wasn’t paying enough as some other coastal fire departments, which in turn lag behind higher-paying emergency service jobs in the Willamette Valley and Portland area.

So in mid-June, the board voted unanimously to increase firefighter pay again — a bonus for the first six months of the year and a raise effective July 1.

To adjust wage scales, the board gave a 4.9 percent one-time bonus to seven employees – five firefighters, an assistant administrator and a part-time office assistant – based on their pay from December to May. The bonuses ranged from $204 to $1,522 and cost the district a total of $7,328.

“It’s important to get the crew up to where they should be,” district administrator Frankie Petrick told the board at its June 13 meeting. “The way to do that is to give them bonuses.”

Then, as of July 1 the district raised firefighter wages again — 8 percent for firefighters and 5 percent for assistant administrator Shelby Knife. Petrick did not get the bonus or the July 1 raise.

The increases come even as the Yachats district struggles with finances and has already decided to ask voters for a new, much larger operating levy in November.

Even with the raises, firefighting jobs are still not lucrative. While most fire agencies offer retirement and insurance plans, hourly pay is low – but the number of hours worked are high.

In Yachats, the new pay scale that took effect July 1 starts at $17.85 an hour for a firefighter/EMT and $18.35 an hour for a firefighter/paramedic. It tops out at $21.35 an hour for the firefighter/EMT and $22.35 an hour for a firefighter/paramedic.

Firefighters work an average of 2,900 hours a year – yes they get paid to sleep during their 48-hour shifts – 30 percent more than standard 40 hour-a-week jobs.

Yearly pay, without overtime, in Yachats will now range from $53,750 to $66,142 for a firefighter/EMT and $56,848 to $69,240 for a firefighter/paramedic.

Employees are pleased.

“It shows they are aware of the pay situation and that they care,” said Joe Schwab, one of the district’s two firefighter/paramedics.

The district had been recruiting and offered a job to a firefighter/paramedic from Corvallis. But he turned down the job offer in May so Yachats now fills that shift with firefighters from other coastal departments. Because of the ambulance regulations it adds shifts for Schwab and the district’s second firefighter/paramedic, Mo Larmi.

“It’s still dodgy at best,” Larmi told the board in June.

All districts looking

The Yachats fire district is not the only one scrambling for staff.

The last of the Seal Rock Fire Department’s four paid firefighters departed in June. Chief Will Ewing has been filling shifts with temporary firefighters from other local and Willamette Valley departments and with some volunteers but there have been occasional gaps in filling shifts.

The district is purposefully moving away from a full roster of paid staff, to rely more on volunteers to respond to emergency calls – a practice that most other departments on the coast and across Oregon are finding increasingly difficult. Ewing hopes to hire at least one full-time firefighter this summer.

The Newport Fire Department got city council approval this spring to add three firefighters and it has two vacancies, said Chief Rob Murphy, who hopes to have all five on board by the end of August.

“It’s the most we’ve ever hired at once in our history,” he said.

Where the department would at one time get 70-80 applications for openings, Murphy said, the current job openings drew 28. Pay for Newport’s unionized firefighters ranges from $5,050 to $5,795 a month and they work the same 48 hours on/96 hours off as other coastal departments.

“We are finding a shifting dynamic with openings,” he said. “We’re not immune to the hiring crunch that everyone is seeing.”

North Lincoln Fire & Rescue is the largest and busiest fire district in the county. It added eight firefighters July 1 after voters approved a new, larger operating levy last November when the district promised to staff its station in Taft and put three firefighters on two of its engines. The firefighters included four paramedics and for EMTs, said Chief Rob Dahlman, who are now going through the district’s three-week academy and will begin responding to calls Aug. 1.

Those openings drew 33 applications, said Dahlman. The Depoe Bay Fire Department hired three firefighters off that same list after losing employees to departments in the Portland area.

Only “a few” applications were from firefighters in Lincoln County, Dahlman said, with new hires coming from as far away as Boise.

Like most coastal departments, only half of North Lincoln’s firefighters live in the area, Dahlman said. The other half – from as far away as Springfield and Roseburg — commute in for their two-day shift before returning home for four days off.

Dahlman blames much of that on the lack of affordable housing. “There is no housing down here,” he said.

If there is one department that has had a stable firefighting force it is Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue in Waldport, despite the turmoil – two recalls and a resignation – that has rocked its five-member governing board. It has six paid firefighters – two who were on temporary contracts since the spring but now are regular employees. The district hopes to hear in September if it has received a three-year federal grant to pay for three firefighters, including the two more recent hires, and to hire one more.

But no fire chief on the coast expects the search for personnel to be resolved any time soon.

“There’s a scramble to hire people,” said Dahlman. “What used to be a highly competitive job market is now ‘Hey, come work for us’.”

• Quinton Smith, a longtime Oregon journalist, is the founder and editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com