Comments on: Is the Camas-Washougal Fire Department about to disband? https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/is-the-camas-washougal-fire-department-about-to-disband/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=is-the-camas-washougal-fire-department-about-to-disband Your News Source with Integrity Tue, 25 May 2021 18:27:56 +0000 hourly 1 By: Frank https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/is-the-camas-washougal-fire-department-about-to-disband/#comment-196 Tue, 25 May 2021 18:27:56 +0000 https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/?p=97322#comment-196 Also, if I recall correctly when looking over the original CWFD agreement, it was written where the City of Washougal handed ownership of their fire apparatus to the City of Camas. Washougal previously had many rigs, thanks to having volunteers who could come roll them as needed before their volunteer group was gutted by 2444’s influence. I believe Camas surplused many (most?) of those rigs, and had no contractual requirement to pay the City of Washougal any of those proceeds. I also don’t recall seeing any language in the agreement that required Camas to give any of the rigs back if the agreement was terminated. I could be wrong, but that’s the way I remember it.

]]> By: Frank https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/is-the-camas-washougal-fire-department-about-to-disband/#comment-195 Tue, 25 May 2021 17:50:04 +0000 https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/?p=97322#comment-195 Actively marginalizing and quashing fire volunteerism in Washougal has been a significant result of the expansion of IAFF Local 2444, which also represents ECFR. Ten years ago, East County fire operated successfully with a mix of paid and volunteer out of six stations, routinely rolling units from at least four (and sometimes all six) of those stations for a major call. Today, now part of 2444, they have barely any volunteers, and only run out of two stations, with two sold off and two used almost exclusively for storage. As a result, ECFR, along with CWFD, rarely can collectively cover their own major calls in-house and routinely require support from Vancouver and/or FD3 while CWFD and especially ECFR rigs sit in a station with no one to respond with them.

Local 2444’s greed to push out volunteers and thus make hiring more career staff the only apparent alternative has wrecked the effectiveness of CWFD and ECFR to reliably provide services, under the guise of “paid professionals” being the only qualified responders. Under their reasoning, it’s better for you to wait 10-15 minutes for “professionals” to arrive than accept help from a volunteer arriving in 3 minutes with an AED – while you still have a chance of being saved. Never mind that in ECFR all members were held to identical training standards.

Now the agencies are all having trouble covering expenses, rigs sit idle and unstaffed, there are few volunteers left still willing to be mistreated by certain 2444 members, and the breaking point approaches where their coveted union jobs are at stake. Services will suffer, neighboring agencies will be forced to cover more, response times will increase, and the taxpayers will bear the consequences.

Some of us tried to sound the warning bell 10 years ago, but no one wanted to listen.

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