VRFPD
April 21
5
2022
Vernonia Rural Fire Protection District
Dead Dinosaurs
By Chief Dean Smith
The fire service has, to my
knowledge, always had a hard time
with change. I started volunteering in
late 2001 and within the first few years
had the ability to get training outside of
our own agency and visit other depart-
ments. Training was taken wherever it
was available if I could manage to get
the time off from my regular job to go
take it. I visited several other stations
in Columbia County and surrounding
counties. Time was spent as far away as
Pendleton and Ashland, and after sev-
eral of these classes and seminars there
seemed to be a few common themes:
change, volunteerism, and the ever-in-
creasing job demands. I was told once at
a seminar about volunteerism that most
of the people in the room were dead di-
nosaurs. The group laughed but I believe
we all took that to heart that day – the
fire service has always resisted change.
I haven’t been to a seminar or confer-
ence yet where someone didn’t use the
phrase, “Cause it’s the way we’ve al-
ways done it,” and/or “It still works for
us.” I tried to be part of the group who
accepted the new ways of doing things,
but in turn I found a comfortable spot in
the yesterday. It was easier to continue
the struggle with something comfort-
able rather than try something new and
risk the imposed catastrophic failure.
As I was moved into the man-
agement/administrative role here at the
Vernonia Rural Fire Protection District,
the learning curve for district opera-
tions, training, volunteer coordination,
administrative duties, and the like,
seemed never ending. It was as though
every task or project that would get
completed, three more would come into
view with an increasingly heavy need.
So, for years we continued to slowly
pick the hottest iron in the fire and try to
manage it while not knocking the other
out of place.
When the community heard
our calls for help in the way of an Op-
erational Levy, we hired a Training
Captain. This position helped spread the
load of some administrative duties as
well as being burdened with solidifying
a training program that had been handed
from a volunteer training officer. This
was a very daunting task as every vol-
unteer that put the exhaustive labor into
the program had done so to the extent of
burnout and loss of love for the position.
The District continued to “do
what we do” and pushed on, making
the ends meet but never really breaking
through to a consistent level of stability
and growth. Our administrative needs
continued to outgrow the hours of avail-
able productivity and the call volume
increased steadily. We were graced by
the community with our current operat-
ing levy that allowed us a third full-time
administrator to, yet again, help spread
the load of higher-level duties. As the
staff started to whittle away at the grow-
ing irons in the fire, the call volume
continued its increase and the numbers
of volunteers, as well as the hours they
were available, continued to decrease.
Part of the current Operations
Levy was to fund a Resident Volunteer
program where we teamed up with our
neighboring district Mist-Birkenfeld.
Together we assembled this program
and had up to six students, enrolled in
college classes, split between the two
districts. This program showed promise
and after the initial training phase pro-
vided, at the minimum, one additional
responder every day. Slowly there were
changes with the participants of the pro-
gram and with some rule changes in the
governing bodies the program had to be
cancelled. Some of the personnel are
still volunteers but their availability is
limited.
I say all of this above to get
to this point of change. In the past the
district has tried to expand its admin-
istrative grasp on the district’s overall
growth but that has seemed to just “kick
the can down the road.” With the vacan-
cy in the Training Chief’s position, the
admin has somewhat divvied up the du-
ties between each other and utilized the
remaining funds in this year’s budget to
hire a temporary full-time line firefight-
er/EMT. We have also managed to hire
three part-time firefighter/EMTs.
The problem we continue to
run into with our reduced volunteer re-
sponse is the paid staff overtime to en-
sure that someone responds to the call
for service. That someone was usually a
“Duty Officer,” either paid or volunteer.
CAN YOU FILL
THESE BOOTS?
VOLUNTEERS
WANTED
Call Dean Smith
for more information
on free training
(503)429-8252
The last couple of years have been in-
creasingly hard for all our population
base and the crews here were not left
out of that. The ability to have some-
one respond to each call still weighs
on the Duty Officer and we are look-
ing to move past this roadblock.
The plan is to do our best
to consolidate the big stuff between
the admin and spread out the more
common and repeatable projects and
chores to paid and full-time staff. If the
upcoming budget allows, we will have
one Fire Chief, one Operations/Training
Chief as well as two full-time and five
part-time firefighters to create a more
consistent first out response crew.
My overall goal is to make sure
that we continue to increase the person-
nel on scene in a way that is consistent
while being as fiscally responsible as we
can. If we don’t continue to adapt and
change, we just may become extinct.
VRFPD Board Meetings Are Held on the
Second Tuesday of the month at 7:00 pm.
The next meeting is scheduled for May 9, 2022
at the fire station, 555 E. Bridge Street.
Calls responded to March 1-31
Fire
Emergency Medical Service
Hazardous Condition
Service Call
Good Intent
False Alarm
Total
1
21
1
1
3
1
28