By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews
SEAL ROCK – Seal Rock Fire District chief Will Ewing was met with a resounding show of support at the district’s board meeting last week in response to criticism leveled against him for an inflammatory email he wrote in February.
“Chief always has the best interests of the district, volunteers, personnel and their families,” board president Karl Kowalski said in reading from a letter signed by all five board members. “We support and back Will and his actions, ideas and plans …”
The letter was addressed to the East Lincoln County Fire District board and asked them to also support the chief, which they did in a letter that mirrored Seal Rock’s.
The Seal Rock letter went on to say the district was in “a bad spot on all fronts” when Ewing came on board in 2022 and “rebuilt and restructured” it into “the success it is today” while also establishing “a road map” for a successful future.
The letter from East Lincoln’s board touted Ewing’s ‘firefighters without borders’ which has two district’s working together and sharing resources. They credited him with helping to develop East Lincoln, which is based in Eddyville, into a “self-sufficient district.”
“When Will came on board, we (at) East Lincoln County were in the middle of a tumultuous storm and he was the light in the fog for us,” the letter said.
The reason for the unified response, which also included a letter of support signed by nearly 40 emergency responders and volunteers from both districts, was in answer to condemnation from Waldport-based Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue’s board – the district in the crosshairs of Ewing’s Feb. 1 email.
Ewing’s email was initially sent to 38 people which included all Seal Rock and East Lincoln County Fire volunteers and paid firefighters, but made public Feb. 23 on a Waldport community Facebook page. It was also sent to the media, legislators, the Lincoln County district attorney and sheriff’s offices, other Lincoln County fire agencies including Central Coast and the Oregon Government Ethics Commission.
In the email, Ewing vowed retribution against Central Coast for what he said were years of attacks against Seal Rock. And with language that included “after blood” and “open war” he vowed to discredit COCF&R.
Central Coast’s board responded by holding a special meeting Feb. 26 where they also called for an investigation by the ethics commission. The board called Ewing’s statements “reprehensible” and that there was no place “in the fire service for this type of hate, cruelty, vengeance and sabotage …”
They called on the Seal Rock fire board to take immediate action and report to the public what steps would be taken to remedy “the harm this ongoing attitude has done to the community, surrounding fire districts, and individual targets” of Ewing’s email.
The letter of support for Ewing submitted at Thursday’s meeting by emergency responders and volunteers praised Ewing, saying he “shows respect and values his firefighters and personnel,” is “clear and calm at all times when communicating,” does not allow his ego to interfere with the job and has “trust and respect from his firefighters.”
For those and other reasons the letter stated “…we again want it to be known that we fully support Chief Will Ewing as our Seal Rock Fire Chief.”
The history of bad blood between Central Coast and Seal Rock dates back to 2020 and has been followed by a steady stream of verbal sparring since.
It has its origins in an 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 cancellation of 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 COCF&R Chief Jamie Mason from his job. Voters recalled two of those COCF&R board members in June 2022 and its chair resigned in support.
The barbs between Seal Rock’s and Central Coast’s boards continued over the weekend in comments following a post on Facebook’s Waldport Community page written by Kowalski and posted by board member Paul Rimola
In other business, the board heard that:
- Seal Rock personnel responded to 57 alarm calls in February, with 51 of those in district along with four to Yachats, one in Toledo and one in Siletz.
- There was an average of 4.6 responders per call, down from 6.6 in January.
- Volunteers logged 1,680 standby hours at Station 62 near Bayshore in February, down from 1,848 in January.
- Garret Jaros covers the communities of Yachats, Waldport, south Lincoln County and natural resources issues for YachatsNews and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com
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