Medical Lake, County Fire District 3 consider merger

The city of Medical Lake and Spokane County Fire District 3 are discussing a merger due to an increasing number of no-response calls by the city's all-volunteer fire department.

The Medical Lake Fire Department failed to respond to over one-quarter of the calls they received in 2018, according to a city report. SCFD3 picked up the slack under joint support agreements between the two entities.

To blame for response is a lack of staff availability from the all-volunteer fire department, according to Medical Lake Fire Chief Jason Mayfield.

Medical Lake received a total of 642 calls for service in 2018. Of those, 167 were instead handled by SCFD3, who has a mix of full-time and volunteer firefighters. The statistic was sobering.

"The 2018 numbers made us take a harder look," at the long-discussed possibility of a merger, Mayfield said. "We are obviously struggling to meet call demands."

The MLFD has 25-26 volunteers - numbers vary as volunteers come and go - who together clocked over 12,000 on-call hours, and nearly 7,500 on-duty station hours in 2018, plus over 1,600 hours of training, according to a department fact sheet. And those hours are in addition to volunteers regular work hours.

Mayfield himself said he clocks hundreds of hours as fire chief - after his 40-plus hour job with ambulance service American Medical Response.

"Its not for a lack of trying," Mayfield said of department personnel. "We have a really good group of guys here."

He noted anecdotally that volunteerism is "way down" across the board.

"We are obviously struggling to meet call demands," Mayfield said.

He felt that the MLFD would eventually need some full-time staffing to handle the increased call volume. But the cash-strapped city doesn't have the revenue base to cover those costs.

"Volunteers are hard to come by," Mayfield said, noting that volunteer fire fighting requires a huge training commitment. "It's a lot to ask for."

Spokane County Fire District 3 Chief Cody Rohrbach agreed.

"Their need for service is now outpacing the availability of volunteers," Rohrbach said, noting that volunteer firefighters and EMS personnel in Medical Lake "absolutely have good intentions to provide the highest level of service possible."

SCFD3 is currently responsible for a 565 square mile area on the West Plains including the massive 2.6 million-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center building currently under construction near the Medical Lake interchange on Interstate 90.

While Amazon had not provided any funding to do so, Rohrbach noted that his department has had to up its game to improve service levels because of the fulfillment center and other development in the area.

As a result, SCFD3 is currently in the process of hiring three additional full-time career fire captains to establish a permanent presence at the district's existing Station 33 in Four Lakes.

The district is nearing completion of improvements to the structure that include a kitchen, sleeping quarters, an additional parking bay, and increasing the depth of an existing bay for a 75-foot ladder truck to accommodate its growing mission.

Once completed, each shift at Station 33 will include a fire captain and one of approximately 120 part-paid on-call volunteers who receive full-time wages when they respond to a call-out from their pager. The volunteer will work a full-time shift at Station 33 alongside the career captain on a rotating basis.

"That will effectively put a presence at that station around the clock," Rohrbach said.

If voters approve a merger, it's from this station that the majority of Medical Lake responses would originate, Rohrbach said.

Merger discussions are in preliminary stages, according to Rohrbach. There are currently no discussions about SCFD3 establishing a physical presence in downtown Medical Lake, at least in the near term.

"The best option for the community is to cover Medical Lake and the surrounding community from Station 33," Rohrbach said, although he did note that doesn't mean it wouldn't be a future consideration.

More likely, however, is the potential of building a new fire station near the intersection of Craig Road and State Highway 902, which would "position us even closer to the city of Medical Lake," Rohrbach said.

Volunteer firefighters from Medical Lake would be absorbed by SCFD3 in the merger, according to Rohrbach.

Any merger first requires the approval of the Medical Lake City Council. If passed, it would then be sent to both Medical Lake and SCFD3 voters for ultimate approval.

There are currently six fire departments on the West Plains. In addition to Medical Lake and SCFD3, there is also Spokane County Fire District 10, Cheney Fire Department, Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport.

Lee Hughes can be reached at [email protected].