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About Vernonia's voice. (Vernonia, OR) 2007-current | View Entire Issue (June 21, 2018)
community june21 2018 3 Lack of Fire Volunteers Becoming Critical continued from front page so we had to call for those additional resources, which obviously takes time. Banks and Mist are our closest resources and they’re both about the same distance away, which is about 30 minutes. There would have been much more damage if our one firefighter had not responded.” This, in essence, is the crucial issue facing our local fire department. With only a handful of certified fire- fighters, the duty officer can never be sure who, or how many firefighters, will respond in the event of a fire, or if someday no one will respond. Smith says that last year he did a review of the four most recent fires that VRFPD responded to. “The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recommends that fire engine doesn’t roll with less than three people, because in fire service, ‘one means none,’ in other words, we don’t do any- thing alone - it’s a buddy system. If we had followed NFPA recommendations on those four previous fires, and this last one, we would not have had any re- sponse.” “On this most recent fire, the family did lose property, and that is obviously not good” says Chief Smith. “But we can also look at the positives – no lives were lost, and everything that was lost is replaceable.” Currently VRFPD has two paid personnel, Chief Smith and Captain Steinweg. In addition to responding to emergency calls, both have other re- sponsibilities; Chief Smith has numer- ous administrative duties and Captain Steinweg is responsible for training the volunteers. VRFPD has just 15 to- tal volunteers, but only seven of those are trained as firefighters and certified to operate the specialized equipment; the VRFPD does have two new recruits who are currently training to become firefighters, but that training can take up to a year to complete, usually lon- ger depending on the recruit’s avail- ability for training. The remaining vol- unteers are part of a logistics unit that can help with tasks around the fire sta- tion and some of them are certified to drive emergency vehicles and run wa- ter pumps, but that’s it. Chief Smith, Captain Steinweg, and two Lieutenants are the only officers in the department, and act as duty officers - one of them is always on duty, 24 hours a day, so someone is assigned to respond to an emergency call. They depend on vol- unteers to round out a crew in the event of a fire or rescue operation. “One of the key issues is that I don’t think the community realizes how thinly spread out we really are,” says Steinweg. One big misconception about the VRFPD is that many community members don’t understand that the Fire District and the ambulance service are two separate entities. Metro West Ambulance, a private for hire compa- ny, currently provides the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) response in Vernonia. Metro West furnishes two ambulances and a full time, 24 hour Paramedic, along with a daytime Emer- gency Medical Technician (EMT) dur- ing the week. The Vernonia Volunteer Ambulance Association provides a vol- unteer to partner with the Metro West Paramedic during evening and weekend shifts. Several of those medical volun- teers also volunteer with the VRFPD. VRFPD is dispatched to all medical calls with the VRFPD duty of- ficer always responding, along with any available volunteers, in order to provide additional personnel to assist the med- ics. “When someone calls 9-1-1 we always show up, 100% of the time,” says Steinweg. “About 80 to 90% of our calls are medical so we show up with an ambulance and I think the community thinks those Metro West ambulances are part of Vernonia Fire. Metro West has a paramedic here 24/7, weekends, holidays, everyday. Verno- nia Fire, with the exception of the Chief and myself, is strictly volunteers. It seems like the community thinks things are fine here, but we’re struggling for volunteers. When we have a fire, we don’t know how many firefighters we’ll have responding. It’s really a roll of the dice.” “It used to be that VRFPD would respond with a rescue unit with two or three volunteers to any medical calls or accidents,” adds Chief Smith. “Now we just don’t have the personnel, so it’s usually just the duty officer.” Smith says the number of calls that VRFPD responds to continues to increase year after year. We’re at that point where it’s really hard for this en- tity to respond to 600 calls a year, with- out more paid people, or more volun- teers,” says Smith. Volunteerism is down across all sectors of community groups and schools. “People have families, more people have jobs, or more than one job. People have long commutes,” says Steinweg. “We get that.” Fire departments have the add- ed hurdle of rigorous and time consum- ing training requirements and standards that volunteers must meet and maintain. “Because of the safety issues we face as firefighters, and because of accidents in- volving firefighters, they’ve increased the number of hours of training you need before you can go out and fight a live fire incident,” says Steinweg. Smith adds that household materials – furniture, carpeting, cloth- ing, computers and televisions – are all more likely to be made of plastic and other synthetic materials, rather than natural materials, making a fire scene more toxic and dangerous for firefight- ers. “The fires burn so fast now, that by the time we show up a structure fire can be fully involved and unsafe for us to enter or go onto the roof. We’ve had to change our tactics in the last 20 years or so, because the fuel load in a structure, and its flammability, keeps increasing. Added danger requires more training. Our volunteers have to have the same training as professional fire fighters get- ting paid $60,000 to $70,000 a year. ” Not only are the training hour requirements prohibitive for some potential volunteers, but a lack of ad- equate training facilities also makes training burdensome. Steinweg says his volunteers often team up with volun- teers from Mist-Birkenfeld for training Publisher and Managing Editor Scott Laird 503-367-0098 scott@vernoniasvoice.com Contributors Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici Chip Bubl Tobie Finzel Karen Kain Shannon Romtvedt Robert Schattschneider Photography Karen Kain Scott Laird One year subscription (24 issues) $35 Vernonia’s Voice is published on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month. Vernonia’s Voice, LLC PO Box 55 Vernonia, OR 97064 503-367-0098 Want to advertise? Have an article? Contact: scott@vernoniasvoice.com www.VernoniasVoice.com continued on page 6 TransAction Transmission has moved! 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